Hunted
by Striders-Girl89
Summary: Follows on from The Tales of Bella Lumic. The Doctor and Bella continue travelling through time and space, but why does this Major Ingram's name keep popping up wherever they go? Contains a lot of running and expect some angst-y moments.
1. Ep1 The Sleeping Policeman CH1

_**Author's Note: So here is the first episode in my new series! Woo hoo! It is basically set a few weeks after the events of The Emerald Mantis and it just plunges head first into the story. Nothing slow about it! **_

_**Anyway, it is my second series involving the Doctor and my OC companion Bella Lumic, so I am kind of pushing the real events (i.e. The Planet of the Dead, The Waters of Mars, The End of Time and the fifth series back a year. So, instead of the Fifth series (Eleventh Doctor) starting in 2010, if we go by the dates in my series, it won't have happened until 2011. The Tenth Doctor lived an extra year! *fan girl melt down* Sorry... Does that make sense? I hope so... Anyway, I don't suppose dates matter to anyone but me, so I will stop rambling.**_

_**Throughout this series (there will probably be thirteen episodes, just like last time) I will make references to my last series, but it isn't a necessity to have read it. If you get confused, have no idea what I am talking about, or just forgot what happened, sent me a message and I will try and answer any questions.**_

_**Oh, if you are interested, there is this little question and answer thing that you fill out in the view of your OC. Feel free to use it, I got it off deviant art, just tell me so I can read yours and let me know what you think of mine. I put a lot of thought into it :P**_

_**So, I will stop rambling now and let you get on and read it! Let me know what you think, cause I love hearing your thoughts.**_

_**ENJOY!**_

_**P.S. Sorry already for what happens...**_

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><p><strong>Chapter One: Violet Snow<strong>

In an empty street on a strange, new planet, the Doctor and Bella walked side-by-side, the latter becoming more and more fascinated by the violet coloured snow falling lightly around them. Spotting a snowman that someone had obviously made the previous day, Bella ran ahead, exclaiming "But it's made out of purple snow!"

The Doctor watched her, chuckling slightly as she picked up snow from the ground and held it in her gloved hands, laughing. _All the things she had seen in the Universe, and it's the snow that gets her_, he thought, amused. He continued to watch her as she poked the violet snowman a few times in his side before it suddenly quivered and fell to the ground around Bella's snow-booted feet.

"I didn't do it!" Bella said guiltily taking a step backwards, making the Doctor grin at her.

"Come on," he said as he turned to walk back the way they had just come. "Let's go and buy some breakfast, I hear the cornflakes here have a distinct bite to them!"

Bella smiled and made to go after him, but she couldn't move. "Doctor!" she gasped.

The Doctor, who had already started walking without her, turned back and found Bella's legs slowly being covered by the now creeping, violet snow that was already halfway up both of her legs.

"Doctor, I can't move," she said looking to him alarmed.

"Hold on," the Doctor said, quickly walking back to her.

She gave him a cheeky smile. "What else am I going to do?"

He grinned at her, retrieving his sonic screwdriver from his overcoat before he stopped walking suddenly, feeling the snow beneath his own feet starting to shift and crawl up onto his grey converses.

"Keep moving," Bella suggested. "It won't be able to creep up your legs if you aren't still long enough."

"Brilliant," the Doctor said before beginning to run noisily in circles around Bella, pointing his sonic screwdriver at the snow surrounding them. Even as he did this though, he could feel the snow grabbing at the soles of his shoes.

"You know, this would be such a funny sight if the snow wasn't trying to eat us," Bella said lightly while she watched the Doctor give up with the sonic and just run flailing his arms around. "I have _never_ seen you look like such a dork!"

"Oi!" the Doctor said, sounding rather hurt, but Bella gave him another flash of her brilliant smile so he forgave her before a new, sinister voice spoke.

"Having fun, Doctor?"

The Doctor slid to a stop, which was a mistake as the snow instantly enveloped his shoes and began slowly moving up his long legs. Looking up he saw a tall figure in a hooded black cloak. The figure wore black leather-like-gloves and his face… well it was like nothing else the Doctor had ever seen. The figure had pale, leathery skin, his pale lips seemed dry and cracked and his teeth were sharp and pointed. He had no eyes, just dark depressions where his eyes should have been.

As Bella stared at the fearsome looking being with wide eyes, the Doctor said darkly "The Trickster,"

The tall being gave a creepy smile and gave the Doctor a slight bow. "I have wanted to meet you for such a long time." He said and Bella frowned.

The Doctor looked up to him with a distasteful expression on his face. "I can't say the feeling is mutual."

The Trickster gave an unpleasant chuckle, still smiling. "He is so very charming, isn't he Isabel?"

Startled that this strange creature knew her name, she looked from the Doctor up to him.

"That wasn't a question, you don't need to answer that," the Trickster said, his voice no longer kind. "For some strange reason everyone finds the Time Lord charming, especially _this_ incarnation."

"How's life with two less members of the Trickster's brigade?" the Doctor asked hotly, the snow moving up past his knees now.

"Still harbouring a grudge, I see." The Trickster sneered, "For the record, I had no involvement in what one of my members tried to do to young Bella here. It was foolish of her to try the same trick twice with you around, let alone to a half-Nealonian. As for the Time Beetle and Donna Noble – well, no serious harm was done."

"No serious harm?" the Doctor repeated, his voice raised slightly. "You nearly _destroyed_ a parallel universe in which you managed to get both Donna and myself killed!" out of the corner of his eye, he saw Bella give a small shudder in which she attempted to hide, but the Trickster had already noticed.

"Chaos," the Trickster said with a malevolent expression, "is just so easy to bring to the cosmos."

"Doctor, who is this guy?" whispered Bella, surveying the Trickster with a worried expression.

"Tell her who I am, Time Lord." The Trickster said, cutting across the Doctor who had opened his mouth to explain. "She won't remember anything in a minute."

"What do you mean I '_won't remember anything in a minute'_?" Bella asked as the Trickster gave the Doctor a malevolent smile before vanishing.

Bella gasped in shock and the Doctor glanced around him; he didn't trust this transcendental being one bit.

"Bella whatever you do, don't let him touch you!" he told Bella quickly, who gawked at him.

"In case you've forgotten, I'm not going anywhere." Bella said pointing down to her waist where the snow was still continuing to rise. "But it looks like he's gone anyway. Weird thing to say though…"

"He's never just gone, Bella." The Doctor said, trying to stress to her how bad a situation they were in.

Not a second later, the Trickster reappeared beside Bella.

"Get away from her!" the Doctor said slowly and dangerously.

"Can you imagine, Doctor, what kind of a universe it would be if you and Bella went your separate ways?" the Trickster asked gleefully, "All those stolen moments, all those things that _could_ have been, and all those people that _could_ have been saved."

"Don't you dare," the Doctor said, horrified, making Bella look to him alarmed.

"Can you not see that I cannot possibly resist that much anarchy? So much chaos would occur without her by your side, the death of the last Time Lord would be inevitable, in fact it is already on its way, I will just make it happen that much quicker –"

"No!" Bella cried, struggling to free herself from the snow which had now worked its way over her thick, black puffer-jacket to halfway up her chest. "No, I won't let that happen!" she finished, looking furiously to the Trickster beside her.

The Trickster gave a sinister laugh. "You needn't fear, Bella. You won't remember him and you'll never remember what has just happened, so you won't realise that he is gone."

"No," she whispered, looking emotionally to the Doctor, whose own expression mirrored hers perfectly.

"I need him!" she cried quietly looking back to the Trickster.

"You do not need what you cannot remember," the Trickster said cruelly as he took off the glove on his right hand.

"Don't touch her!" the Doctor yelled, struggling to get free of the snow, but the Trickster's smile only widened as he lifted his pale hand and held it dangerously close to Bella's forehead. She moved desperately, trying so hard to get free from the snow holding her in place, but with another cruel laugh, the Trickster placed his index and middle fingers on her forehead.

The snow instantly dropped away from her perfectly still body and his fingers lingered on her forehead for a few moments until finally he pulled them back. Bella instantly fell backwards into the soft violet snow, her emotion-filled face facing towards the Doctor, motionless except for her blue eyes, which lingered on the Doctor's.

"You are better off alone, Doctor." The Trickster said in his cruel voice, obviously enjoying the pain he was causing for both the Doctor and Bella. "You do so much more damage that way."

"I'm sorry," Bella whispered but the Doctor couldn't hear her, they were too far apart, he only saw the words form on her lips before her eyes slowly shut.

"I'll find you," he managed to croak out, making the Trickster give a deep, truly amused laugh.

"But she'll never remember you!" he said spitefully, before both himself and Bella disappeared.

The snow released its grip on the Doctor's now saturated pants and he sunk to his knees in the violet snow, keeping his head cast emotionally downwards. "Bella," he whispered emotionally.


	2. Ep1 The Sleeping Policeman CH2

_**Author's note: Here is the second chapter for you, I hope you enjoy!**_

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><p><strong>Chapter Two: The Search is On.<strong>

The Doctor woke with a sudden start, momentarily unaware of where he was, which turned out to be the console room in the TARDIS, sitting on the three-seater chair. He must have fallen asleep, _six days with no sleep can do that to you_, he thought darkly to himself as he stood up and stretched out before pulling the beeping computer screen towards him and putting on his brainy specs to peer intelligently at the Gallifreyan writing on the screen.

Eventually the Doctor frowned and kicked the centre console with his foot in frustration before falling back into the chair, grabbing his foot in pain, feeling thankful that the TARDIS hadn't said anything along the lines of '_serves yourself right for not learning that it hurts the first time that you did it_'.

He sighed, running his hands through his hair. The Trickster had taken Bella six days ago and he couldn't find any trace of them in the entire universe and he was scared; scared for what might happen to her and scared for what would become of him should he not find her and get her back.

_You are better off alone, Doctor… You do so much more damage that way_…

The Doctor shivered, remembering the Trickster's cold words. He was right of course; when he was on his own he made more mistakes because he had no one to stop him from getting carried away. Donna had made him realise that, made him realise how important it was to have a friend that could stand up and tell him when he had gone too far, to tell him to stop. Rose had done that, so had Martha. Donna had so much, as had Bella…

He looked back to the computer screen; still nothing. He clenched his fists. Six solid days with no word, nothing, and not one scrap of news, of any information regarding the Trickster at all, which was unusual in itself. He had started the scan as soon as he had returned to the TARDIS. Six days of scanning the universe, six days of agonising silence.

He had paced the console perhaps one hundred times, he had stood tapping his foot impatiently whilst staring at the screen, he had unfairly yelled at the TARDIS herself for not co-operating, he had spent hours in the library trying to find anything that could possibly help and he had even turned over the attic a few times in a lame attempt to find something that he could have forgotten that he had to use to find Bella. But he found nothing to help him and time moved impossibly slowly.

He stood up slowly and moved towards the stairs. He couldn't handle the waiting anymore, he needed to do something, _anything_ to make the time move more quickly. Letting his legs guide him more than his mind, he walked through his old time travelling ship that he had _borrowed_ so long ago to run away in, the very time machine that he hadn't stopped running in until now. He had nowhere to go, nowhere to be. He was trapped at the Medusa Cascade until he found something that could point him in the direction of Bella.

He stopped walking, seeing where his legs had led him too. Directly in front of him was a brown wooden door with the name '_Bella_' was inscribed neatly in curved, loopy writing, the closest thing to Gallifreyan you could get in a language from Earth. Slowly, he moved forward and opened the thick wooden door and stepped slowly into the room.

It was exactly how Bella had left it; the covers on her bed had been hastily pulled back after the Doctor had bounded in announcing that he would be taking her to see the sphinxes in Egypt, the violet snow in the Violetron Galaxy before finishing the day off with riding giant sea turtles in Fiji in the year 2150. They never got to the sea turtle part though… he walked in a little further, observing the posters of many famous Earth musicians such as Queen, the Doors, Muse, Pink Floyd, Madness, Jimi Hendrix, Alice Cooper, Florence and the Machine as well as her favourite, Imogen Heap. She also had a big poster and a scarf hung up beside her wardrobe in support of her favourite football team, Manchester United.

He sat down on the side of her bed, a bed that he himself had fallen asleep on so many occasions he had now lost track, and noticed a dark brown, leather-bound book that had fallen from her almost-overflowing bookshelf. He leant forward and picked it up, noticing as he did so the word '_journal'_ written across the front of it. He brushed his hand across it, wondering what Bella had written in there, but the thought of opening it too see never once crossed his mind.

He sighed again, his heart aching because he missed having her around before a rather loud alarm suddenly sounded through the TARDIS. He glanced around him at the flashing red light that accompanied the alarm before he suddenly realised what it must have meant. Abandoning Bella's journal on the bed, he sprinted back out the room and ran as fast as he could down the hexagonal-shaped corridors and up the cast-iron steps into the main console room where he leapt to the screen, whipping out his glasses again.

Clutching the screen with both hands, his keen eyes scanned the Gallifreyan writing before letting go and taking a disbelieving step backwards.

"You have got to be kidding me," he said slowly, the Donna-like phrase sounding strange coming from his lips, but he felt it summed up how he felt perfectly. All the stress and worry, the concern and the angst he had experienced over the last six days could have been prevented if he had of, for one second, just stopped and thought about the whole situation properly.

"Of course he would have taken her back home," he said, absolutely furious with himself as he flicked switches, pulled levers and pushed buttons, the klaxon rising and falling noisily as the TARDIS sped towards Tunley.

- O -

Sally Brenner watched her best friend move around her kitchen noisily listening who was listening to her Ipod as she prepared dinner, singing loudly along to _All These Things That I've Done_ by the Killers. She felt that Bella Lumic seemed somehow very different from the last time that she had seen her, and it wasn't different in a good way either.

Since Bella had come back from travelling, Sally thought her to be even stronger as a person than she already had been before leaving, but it was like something was holding her back. She remembered when they had started their first day of school at King Edwards School in Bath with a smile. Sally's older brother Dylan had been showing off for his school friends by picking on her during lunch and Bella had come out of nowhere, walked straight up to him and told him very sternly to go and pick on someone his own size. Needless to say Sally had been best friends with Bella ever since.

But that wasn't what was bothering Sally so much. No, what was bothering her was a number of alarming things. Since Bella had returned, she hadn't once opened a book or watched television or even said one thing that was remotely intelligent, which Sally knew that she did these things all the time. She hadn't gone back to her home, she hadn't spoken about any of the recent alien encounters that they had had (as in the strange praying mantises and the weird space ships that had appeared over the Thames on Christmas Eve which even someone like Sally, who found it very hard to believe in aliens at all, found very interesting) and she didn't even defend the idea of aliens being real when some old bloke down at the pub had said that it was a load of – well, when he said they weren't real.

Sally took a deep breath, still watching Bella from the doorway sadly as she sung "_Another headache, another heartbreak, I'm so much older than I can take_."

When Bella had turned up on the doorstep of the little cottage that Sally rented from her parents on their twenty hectare farm, Bella had been dazed and confused with nothing but her mobile phone and her Ipod mini in her pockets. No bags, no extra clothes, nothing. Sally's first question had been "where's the Doctor?" to which she lamely replied "Doctor Who?"

Sally shook her head. It had nearly been a week since Bella had arrived with no memory of the man in the blue box that she'd been travelling with for ten months. She had asked Bella where she had been and Bella merely said "travelling" an answer.

It was funny really, because even though these things worried Sally, they all seemed rather trivial to the thing that concerned her the most, what terrified her even. Every night since she had gotten back, Bella would wake up, screaming in fear and pain, drenched in a cold sweat from nightmares that she wouldn't remember the next day. Sally had tried to calm her down, but each night it was getting harder and harder because the dreams seemed to be getting progressively worse. She needed help and she needed it fast, but she couldn't find a contact number for the Doctor in Bella's phone.

Glancing down to her watch, Sally discovered that it had just gone twelve noon. Yes, she hadn't managed to get hold of the Doctor, but she hoped she had found the next best thing who should be arriving any minute. Hopefully, this person could help Bella, or at least he would have a way to contact the Doctor.

A quick knock came at the front door.

"I'll get it," Sally said quickly, but she knew that Bella hadn't heard her considering she was still singing loudly while she cooked. Sally frowned as she moved into the small cloak room, opening the white front door to find a tall, attractive man looking to her concerned.

"Captain Jack," Sally said, feeling relieved for the first time in days. "Thank you so much for coming!"

"Where is she?" Jack said as he nodded, walking through the door, Sally shutting it behind him to stop the cold wind blowing into the house.

"She's in the kitchen," Sally said quietly as they both heard Bella singing robustly, Jack raising a surprised eyebrow.

"And the Doctor?" he pressed, Sally seeing a worried expression flash across his face. She thought that he obviously found it strange that Bella would be here without the Doctor too, and that didn't comfort her.

"He hasn't been here yet," Sally said quietly, watching him closely. "But I don't know what he'll be able to do, she can't remember him."

Jack looked sharply to Sally, who saw that this troubled him greatly. "What else doesn't she remember?"

"Everything," Sally whispered fearfully. "She has no idea where she's been the last ten months…"

"When you said it was bad, I had no idea it was this bad," Jack said before moving out of the cloak room and into the hallway, obviously following the sound of Bella's robust singing, Sally following him closely until they both emerged into the kitchen.

Sally watched Jack as he watched Bella, who was now singing _Believe Me, Natalie_ by the Killers with her back to them. Jack gave a small, fond smile as he watched her until, after doing a little dance she turned around to face them.

"Oh," she said in surprise when she discovered them standing in the doorway, her cheeks reddening slightly. "Who is this, Sally?"

Sally saw Jack's face fall before he quickly composed himself.

"I'm Jack Harkness," he said moving forward and holding out his right hand, which Bella took.

"Bella Lumic, Sally's best friend," Bella said, shaking him hand. There was no sign of recognition her face. "How do you know Sally, Mr Harkness?"

"I'm an old friend of the family's," Jack improvised indifferently, Sally nodding in agreement. "And please, call me Jack; you'll make me feel like a very old man otherwise."

Bella gave him a small smile and turned back to the slowcooker on the bench behind her. "Will you be staying for dinner, Jack?"

Jack glanced to Sally, who was nodding fiercely.

"Yeah," Jack said looking back to Bella, feeling very worried for his friend. "Yeah, I think I will be staying for a while actually."


	3. Ep1 The Sleeping Policeman CH3

**_Author's notes: Hello, sorry I have taken so long to update, I have been a bit busy with finishing this story, which I still haven't done... It would seem as though my episodes are getting longer and longer. I'm not sure if this is a good thing, I will let you decide on that._**

**_So, just a little formality, I use some song lyrics in this chapter, and I by no means whatsoever have the intention to make people think that I was the genius to come up with them. I will give you a list of the songs at the end of this chapter. No copyright intended._**

**_Anyway, I hope you enjoy the chapter :D_**

**_Oh, and I have been watching the Tom Baker years on tv (I love Foxtel for broadcasting all of his episodes so very much!), so I have been finding that they have been influencing my writing style a little bit. Not so much these early chapters, but moreso as they progress. Anyway, I am rambling. Allons-y!_**

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><p>The Doctor felt the TARDIS become still and he rushed to get his overcoat that hung in its usual place over the arch near the doors. He glanced back to the console as he put his arms in the sleeves with a worried expression on his pale face. The TARDIS didn't sound right. She sounded almost strained and overworked. She sounded <em>sick<em>.

"I will have a look at you as soon as I've found Bella, okay old girl?" he promised truthfully, turning and heading out the doors, trying to ignore the guilty feeling in his stomach.

They had landed on a dark, two-lane street that had very few streetlights lighting the road. He glanced further down the street and saw an old bookstore, a small corner shop, a little fashion boutique that looked as though it clothed people from two to one hundred and two, as well as a large, stone pub. The pub was the only thing open and the Doctor glanced uncertainly back to the TARDIS, wondering if whatever was wrong with the TARDIS meant that they had arrived in the wrong spot. He couldn't imagine Bella being in a pub, but if this was her home town, perhaps she had come with her friends?

Knowing that there was only one way to find out, the Doctor set off down the dark street, hoping that he had found her, but afraid of the state that she was in; would she remember him or had she forgotten him completely, just like the Trickster said she would?

As he approached the pub, he read the name above the door, _the Sleeping Policeman_, and saw a picture beside the sign of a rather large police officer fast asleep leaning back on a wooden chair. He could hear a live band playing from within the walls as people walked out the front door. Taking a deep breath, he pushed open the doors and walked in.

There were people everywhere; older people, younger adults (or at least he hoped they were young adults), families and friends all enjoying the warmth of the roaring open fire in the middle of the large room and a good pub meal and drinks while listening to good, live music. _Much too domestic_, he thought distastefully as his eyes moved over the large crowd, passing over the spectacular wooden bar and the elderly man who stood behind it before finally resting on a familiar young woman, whose eyes passed straight through him without any sign of recognition as she lifted a microphone to her lips. _She didn't know who he was_, he thought, his hearts sinking painfully.

"Now this one is called _Defender_," Bella said, before the band behind her slowly began to play.

"_When nobody's listening,_

_When you get lost in the crowd,_

_When you don't have the answer_

"_I'll help you figure it out._

_I won't let you down,_

_As long as I live I will keep you from harm,_

_If they want to get to you,_

_They'll have to get through me first."_

The Doctor watched as Bella sung, her eyes showing a great deal of emotion that no one but the Doctor seemed to notice. He didn't need to ask her to know that she was signing about him… _Maybe she did remember me_, the Doctor pondered to himself hopefully before someone tapped him on the shoulder.

"Nice of you to join us, Doctor." said a very familiar American accent behind him.

"Jack?" the Doctor asked incredulously, turning to face Captain Jack Harkness who was standing with his arms folded across his chest. "What are you doing here?"

"Me?" he asked the Doctor in a light tone, but the Doctor could tell that he was suspicious with him. "I was called by a very concerned Sally Brenner, you know, the girl who called your TARDIS a piece of junk?"

The Doctor nodded, wincing ever-so-slightly at the memory.

"She called me this morning," Jack continued. "Apparently Bella turned up on Sally's doorstep six mornings ago with no memory of you at all."

The Doctor flinched fully this time, and Jack's suspicious expression softened.

"You didn't wipe her memory?"

"No I did not!" the Doctor said hotly, feeling slightly hurt that Jack had thought that he had wiped the memory of yet another companion. "Why would I do that?"

"You wouldn't," Jack said apologetically. "I just didn't know what to think. C'mon, come and sit down, you look awful. Gemma," he called to a young, blonde woman at the bar, who looked up and smiled. "Can we have another glass of water over here please?"

The woman behind the bar nodded in response.

"Jack," the Doctor groaned, sounding exhausted, thinking he couldn't handle Jack's _friendliness _at the current time.

"Relax Doctor," Jack sighed rolling his eyes, wondering why the Time Lord had such little faith in him.

"_So just remember,_

_I am your defender,_

_I won't let you stand there on your own,_

_No matter what they tell you,_

_I will not surrender,_

_Now until forever,_

_You'll never be alone."_

Jack led the Doctor through the crowd as Bella continued to sing towards the back of the pub where two young adults were sitting expectantly, obviously waiting for Jack's return. One the Doctor recognised as Sally Brenner, Bella's best friend who had indeed called the TARDIS junk the first time that they had met. The other at the table was a fairly tall man (though not as tall as the Doctor), well-built man in his early twenties who was sitting looking at the Doctor with an angry frown.

"_I know that you are strong,_

_When the tables are turned you'll be back by my side,_

_And if they want to break us,_

_Well, just let them try."_

"So you're the Doctor," the young man said coldly. "You're the one Bella's been _travelling_ with, you're the one who abandoned her?"

"Dylan, don't!" said Sally desperately before looking up to the Doctor apologetically. "Sorry, my brother and I are just really worried about her. She isn't herself, in case you haven't noticed. She wouldn't normally be such a show pony; even Jack agreed that something is definitely off with her."

"He still dropped her off here with no memory!" Dylan snapped, glaring at the Doctor now.

"You didn't leave her, did you?" Sally asked looking to the Doctor with wide, trusting eyes, something he wished she would stop doing.

"Trust me, Dylan," Jack said sternly after the Doctor failed to speak and Dylan turned to him. "Like I said before, he would never do that to her."

Dylan gave an immature 'whatever' laugh and slumped back into his chair, as the Doctor slowly sat down beside Sally on the end of the table, just watching Bella sing, such emotion in her voice and her eyes.

"_Half Life_ by Imogen Heap," Sally said quietly, she too watching her best friend as the blonde waitress gave Jack another glass of water.

"It's one of her favourites," the Doctor said quietly, Sally nodding in agreement.

"_The stickler is you've played not one beat wrong,_

_You never promised me anything,_

_Even sat me down, warned me just how they fall,_

_And I knew the odds were I'd never win…"_

The Doctor felt his hearts sink even lower as he listened to the words that had so much meaning that no one else understood and he felt Jack's gaze on him. The Doctor knew that Jack heard the relevance in her words.

"_You've got a schedule to stick to,_

_Got a world to keep sweet,_

_It's so much to everyone all the time,_

_Will you ever slow down? Will I ever come first?_

_The universe contracts decide…_

…_You know you'll never be lonely,_

_You know you'll always be loved,_

_And maybe you'll never need more than that…"_

"Drink?" asked Jack, handing the glass of water to the Doctor, who accepted, feeling sick. Jack had hoped that he would be proving a good enough distraction for the Doctor, but he doubted it very much.

"She's just got one more song, and then we can go home and sort all of this mess out." Sally said quietly, hoping that they could sort it out.

"What is she doing singing in a pub anyway?" the Doctor asked, trying not to listen to the words of the new song that Bella had just started to sing that seemed to be making guilt eat away at his very soul. Her words sounded so true and so full of pain, pain that he had no doubt caused.

"I don't really know myself," Sally admitted quietly. "When she arrived at my house she said she had received a job here, bar tendering during the week and singing on a Sunday night. Edwin Milton had needed someone for ages and apparently she accepted…"

"_The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out,_

_You left me in the dark,_

_No dawn, no day, I'm always in this twilight,_

_In the shadow of your heart,_

"_And in the dark I can hear your heartbeat,_

_I tried to find the sound,_

_But then it stopped and I was in the darkness,_

_So darkness I became._

"_I took the Stars from our eyes and then I made a map,_

_And knew somehow I could found my way back,_

_Then I heard your heart beating, _

_You were in the darkness too,_

_So I stayed in the darkness with you…"_

When the song finally ended, which took an agonisingly long time in the Doctor's opinion, everyone in the vicinity applauded and cheered, except for the Doctor, Jack, Sally and Dylan. They watched Bella smile modestly before moving backwards, letting the two guitar players, the pianist and the violinist take the spotlight.

The Doctor refused to take his eyes off her but he didn't know what he was going to do, how he was possibly going to get her memory back, if it was even that simple. As Bella quietly spoke to the older, larger man behind the bar both of them laughing quietly with each other, the Doctor also remember that he had to figure out how the Trickster had gotten her here. _What was the Trickster planning?_

"Hiya," Bella said as she approached their table smiling at her best friends before stopping in between the Doctor and Sally.

"Good show," Jack said with a smile, the Doctor glaring at him. "Did you have anyone in mind while you were up there singing?"

"Anyone that I know?" asked Dylan suspiciously.

Bella smiled with a kind of 'far away' expression on her face. "You've never met him."

"So there is someone?" said Dylan as Jack and Sally exchanged a startled glance.

"No – I mean," Bella said, her brow creased in confusion. "I'm not sure… Anyway, I'm starved!"

The Doctor frowned, his concern for his best friend growing with each minute that passed. He felt Sally's eyes on him so he looked to her and she gave him an 'I'll-tell-you-everything' look and he nodded.

"Hi," Bella said suddenly, the Doctor looking up to her beside him. "I'm Bella Lumic," she told him with a friendly smile, holding out her right hand.

The Doctor opened and closed his mouth a few times before quickly getting to his feet and taking her hand. "John Smith," he said awkwardly, shaking her hand firmly. _This was just as hard as it had been with Donna_, he thought painfully.

"I knew a John Smith once," Bella said absentmindedly.

"Really?" he asked, wondering what she would say next.

"Mmm," she nodded. "He was a school teacher at an all-boys school a few years ago. Are you a family friend of the Brenner's too?"

The Doctor stared at Bella wordlessly. He _had_ been a school teacher at an all-boys school, although, it had been a bit more than a few years ago.

"Yeah, he is." Sally said quickly after the Doctor failed to answer her.

"I think you can let go of her hand now, _Smith_." Dylan said sourly, making the Doctor look down to discover he was still holding firmly onto Bella's right hand.

"Sorry," he said, letting go of her hand, yet she hardly noticed.

"Are you coming around for dinner too?" she asked him airily.

"He heard that your corned beef is delicious!" Jack complimented her, making her blush slightly.

"Maybe you should wait until you try it to give me compliments." Bella laughed.

"C'mon, let's get going home," Dylan said as he stood up. "Dylan's taxi service is about to leave."

"I'll make my own way, thanks." The Doctor said stiffly.

"Good," Dylan said shrugging, beginning to walk away.

"I shot gun the front seat!" Bella suddenly cried, running after him.

Sally sighed, thinking that her best friend wouldn't normally be one to call 'shot gun', let alone would she normally have failed to notice the hostility between the Doctor and Dylan; she normally was a very perceptive person…

"I am really sorry about Dylan," Sally said quietly, looking to the Doctor's troubled expression. "Hopefully he'll ease up on you once we all sit down and work things out after dinner. I'll see you back at my place; do you know where it is?"

"I know," Jack said and Sally nodded turning and following Bella and her brother out of the crowded pub.

From behind the bar, the pub's owner, the older, chubby, grey-haired man that Bella had stopped to talk to earlier, Edwin Milton stood watching the two newcomers stand silently for a few moments before the one with the long, brown overcoat nodded to the cocky American and they both walked out without another word.

Milton's stomach churned uncomfortably and it wasn't because of normal bodily functions; the man in the brown overcoat looked a lot like the description he'd received from the Trickster. Tall, stand-up-ish brown hair and a dash of over confidence, the Trickster had said, that was the Doctor.

Milton turned and walked into the now empty kitchen, wiping his sweaty brow with a pale blue handkerchief from his pocket.

"_Milton_," said a voice from the mirror beside him.

Milton gave a small jump before turning around to the mirror behind him, seeing the familiar hooded figure that had saved his life as he lay dying on a muddy battlefield not too long ago.

"_She mustn't remember him!_" The Trickster said urgently.

"So that _was_ the Doctor." Milton said dully.

"_Of course it was_!" the Trickster snapped impatiently before continuing more calmly. "_You must remember your part of the bargain. Admittedly it took the Time Lord much longer to find her than even I expected, yet he is here none the less_."

"I thought you said that Bella wouldn't be able to remember him anyway," Milton said with a frown.

"_He might try to start their friendship again when he realises that she no longer has any memories of him at all_," the Trickster said. "_You mustn't let him do that. Remember why you are here, Milton, remember what I have given you!"_

Milton grimaced as the feared chaos maker disappeared, leaving his own, unfamiliar human appearance in the small, plain mirror.

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><p><strong><em>Author's Note: The songs are as follows in order of appearence;<em>**

**_Defender - Gabriella Cilmi_**

**_Half Life - Imogen Heap_**

**_Cosmic Love - Florence + the Machine_**


	4. Ep1 The Sleeping Policeman CH4

**_Author's note: So here is the next chapter! It is a bit shorter than all the others, and you'll probably hate me for it, considering it raises more questions than it answers, but it is an essential scene to set up the rest of the series. Mwahaha._**

**_Haha, just to let you know, FYI and all, so far the story is up to like seven thousand words, which was generally an entire full episode in my last series and we are only up to the forth chapter! So, hopefully you guys are enjoying the length so far, cause it's going to be a long one!_**

**_Enjoy!_**

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><p><strong><span>Chapter Four: Ransacked!<span>**

Jack followed the Doctor into the TARDIS, closing the doors behind him before walking up to the centre console while the Doctor moodily read the computer screen. Jack glanced around him, noting that the usual hum of the TARDIS sounded very different; it sounded to him almost as though it were sick.

"Before you ask," said the Doctor shortly, avoiding Jack's gaze. "I don't know what is wrong with the TARDIS. Everything is all happening at once."

"It sounds like she isn't firing on all cylinders," Jack said.

The Doctor frowned at Jack's poor attempt to lighten the mood. "She sounds like she's strained, like she is diverting most of her power to something else other than running, and I just don't know what. Maybe I pushed her to hard whilst trying to find Bella…"

"How long have you been separated?" asked Jack, a gentler edge to his voice than he would normally use with the Doctor.

"Six days," he answered quietly, sounding quite glum. "We were in the Violetron Galaxy in the fifty-third century."

"The Violet Snow?" enquired Jack. He had taken another time agent to see the violet snow once, long ago before he had the two years of his life stolen from his memories. It had been a young girl from another planet that he'd been trying to impress at the time.

The Doctor nodded. "We'd only been there twenty minutes before the Trickster showed up."

"The same Trickster that Sarah Jane has been having troubles with?"

"I hope not," the Doctor said sharply. "But there is only one of him in the universe, and in my opinion, that is one too many."

"So what did he do, exactly?"

"He used the snow to trap us both." The Doctor told him slowly. "Then, while we were both stuck, he wiped Bella's memory of everything that she's ever done with me and all her time on the TARDIS. I still haven't figured out how he appeared though, it was meant to be impossible, so it must have been a very weak point in time to actually manifest himself."

The Doctor pulled a lever and the klaxon began to rise and fall loudly, yet not in the familiar tones that they were both used to. Cringing, the Doctor flew the TARDIS until the ship became still and quiet again, the sick hum still making them both feel uneasy.

"You might want to have a look at that," Jack said and the Doctor rolled his eyes and headed out the doors.

Jack followed, stepping back out into the cold February night air, realising that they had landed in Bella's front yard. Jack looked to the massive, stone house that was dark, silent and falling into serious disrepair, the once well-trimmed gardens that he remembered from the last time he was there now looking unkempt and overgrown and the whole place now had an eerie feeling about it.

The Doctor had looked up at what could be considered to some to be a small 'stately home' before him and retrieved his sonic screwdriver and his torch from his overcoat's pockets and began walking slowly towards the house. He didn't know what he would find in there, but he had a hunch that something was awaiting discovery.

Unlocking the front door with his sonic, the Doctor entered Bella's house as he switched his torch on, a deep, disturbed frown forming on his face. The entrance hallway to Bella's home was not the same as he remembered, even with the seven Slitheen running around. The floor was covered in muddy, booted footprints as well as papers, broken glass objects and paintings that once hung on the walls. A delicate coffee table that once stood beside the front door had been overturned in front of the door that led into the dining room.

He walked forward, peaking into the dining room, finding all the chairs on their sides (one or two of them were even broken in half), the doors and drawers on the mantelpiece were all open and their contents spilled out everywhere. As Jack walked past him pulling out his own torch and descended the stairs into the cellar, the Doctor climbed up the stairs and went into the room on his right.

Like all the other rooms downstairs, this room's belongings had been strewn across the place too; the wardrobe's doors were hanging off the hooks at strange angles and the clothes spilled out of it, Bella's white suede reading chair was upside down and torn and the mattress hung halfway off the wooden bedframe.

As he heard Jack jog up the stairs and check all the other rooms, the Doctor finally realised what was missing now.

"You know, if I didn't know any better, which I _don't_, I would say that this place has been ransacked." Jack said darkly, entering the room and glancing around him with a displeased expression on his face. "I think someone was looking for something."

"And they found it." The Doctor said an odd edge to his voice. Anger perhaps?

Jack looked to him sharply. "What do you mean?"

"I have been in this house before," the Doctor said quietly with a look that Jack thought could kill his deadliest enemies. "My memories are well preserved and I know what has been taken."

"The computer has gone," Jack suggested.

"Oh, it's far more serious than computers, Jack. When I first entered this room, the walls were covered in photographs of Bella and the people and the things that she liked; Bella with Sally and Dylan, Bella with her horses, Bella in her first school uniform, and all the sentimental stuff that humans like. Now tell me what you see?"

Jack glanced around the room again, his eyes taking in more detail this time; the torn papers and books on the floor, the empty photo frames on the desk. He couldn't even recall any photographs in the rest of the house either, none in the sitting room or even in any other bedroom.

"Why would anyone steal photographs of Bella?" asked Jack with a hint of worry in his voice.

"We need to have a very long chat to Sally and Dylan," the Doctor said dangerously before he moved out the door. Jack glanced around what he assumed to be Bella's old bedroom; he was feeling far more worried now than he had been that morning when he had received the call from Sally on Bella's phone. Slowly, he followed the Doctor back out of the old, abandoned house.


	5. Ep1 The Sleeping Policeman CH5

**_Author's Note: Here is the next chapter guys! Sorry about the wait! I have been writing a good deal for my Harry Potter fanfic (new chapter is up, feel free to give it a look) because aparently I am in a Harry Potter mood!_**

**_Anyway, enjoy the chapter!_**

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><p>The Doctor felt that dinner took an agonisingly long time to get through. He hadn't thought that he would be able to stand all the small talk, all the useless chat that meant absolutely nothing to him. All that he wanted to know was if Bella had been okay, that she wasn't hurt and when (and why) her house had been searched, yet he couldn't ask these questions until Bella, ironically, left them alone. He had no idea what state she was in mentally, which meant he had to tread very carefully until he figured out what the Trickster had done. He didn't even know if there was a possibility that he could even get her memory back…<p>

"John?"

"Sorry – what?" the Doctor said looking up to Bella who was on her feet beside him.

"Have you had enough to eat?" she asked, glancing down to the Doctor's hardly touched dinner plate.

"Oh – yeah, sorry…" the Doctor said apologetically, glancing down to what he probably would have enjoyed, had the occasion been different.

Bella smiled down at him in what the Doctor thought to be a forgiving kind-of-way as she picked up his plate.

"That was delicious!" beamed Jack as he made a move to help her clean the table.

"Don't worry about the dishes, I'll do them." She said smiling. "You can stay here so you can all catch up with one another."

Jack made to protest out of habit, but the Doctor subtly shook his head. _They needed some answers_.

They waited in a tense silence that Bella seemed not to notice until she left the room and Sally waited a few moments before finally speaking.

"So, how is it that my best friend has no memories of the past year with you?" Sally said looking directly at the Doctor. Her tone was not that of an accusing one, it was more filled with worry than anything else.

"Won't she be able to hear us?" Dylan whispered, glancing to the door.

"Of course she won't hear us, Dylan." Sally said shortly. "You know what she's been like! She'll be off in her own little world with her headphones blaring. So Doctor, what happened?"

The Doctor took a moment to answer.

"I took her to a planet that had violet snow –" (Shocked looks from Sally and Dylan, which the Doctor chose to ignore) "- and we were trapped by the Trickster."

"Who's he then?" Dylan asked. "Is he like some kind of court jester or something?"

"The Trickster is a member of the Pantheon of Discord," the Doctor began, trying to remember as much as he possibly could, "Who were a group of some of the most evil beings in the universe, who all went about causing chaos and altering various realities. As far as I know, the Trickster is the only one left after they had all been banished from our universe."

"There is more than _our_ universe?" Dylan asked with wide, excited eyes.

"Yes, but that isn't really the point." the Doctor said shortly.

Dylan cleared his throat. "Right, continue then."

"Anyway, the Trickster is nearly always associated with death because he'll often appear to someone who is on the brink of dying. He'll bargain with people, offering to save them if they do something for him in return."

"What does that mean?" Sally asked hesitantly.

"It means that he saves someone's life that should have died." The Doctor said somewhat bluntly. "He makes bargains with people to alter the progression of time, often creating chaos which is what he feeds off; the energy that the change creates.

"Say for instance that the Trickster made a bargain with a homeless man living in Liverpool; not much would happen at all. But say that that person was actually Bella or myself; that instantly creates a huge, cataclysmic problem for the universe."

"Says you," Dylan said, once again moody. "What makes you so special?"

"His line of work is what makes him so special." Jack said defensively, understanding where the Doctor was going with the conversation now. "So what you are saying Doctor, is that the Trickster is powerless unless he has the consent of another person to act?"

"Correct," the Doctor nodded.

"I still don't get how you and Bella come into this." Sally said frowning.

"Bella and I travel throughout the universe, saving planets and their people," the Doctor explained. "It isn't a chosen profession, it sort of just happens… anyway, in Bella's time with me she has saved her fair share of people, including my life and everyone's on this earth so imagine what would happen if she didn't continue to do that?"

"What if she didn't want to travel with you anymore?" Dylan asked, but the Doctor thought it sounded like more of a challenge.

"That would be different all together." The Doctor stated, secretly hoping that it would never happen.

"Why?" he pressed.

"Because that would be the _right thing _according to the time line due to the fact that Bella would have consciously made the decision herself," the Doctor told him sternly. "You need to remember that Bella is not the person who has given the consent here; her appearing on your doorstep six mornings ago is the result of someone else giving their consent for it to happen. Bella's timeline has been altered because someone that she knows is alive that shouldn't be. None of this should have ever happened."

"And how can you possibly know that?" Dylan asked looking at the Doctor angrily.

"I'm a Time Lord," the Doctor said with an edge to his voice. "I'm the first one to know when something stops time from running as it should."

The two of them stared angrily at each other until Sally brought them back to the more pressing part of the conversation.

"Don't mind Jack and I while we try and work out how to help Bella, will you?" she said somewhat angrily and both the Doctor and Dylan looked away from each other.

"Has she been okay though?" the Doctor asked eventually after an awkward silence.

Sally and Dylan exchanged glances.

"Well," Sally began, unsure of how to answer him. "I suppose she's been okay, but she certainly hasn't been herself."

"How do you mean?" the Doctor asked sharply.

"She doesn't remember anything about you, Doctor." Sally said quietly. "It's hard to get anything useful out of her at all, let alone how she got here. When she first arrived Dylan and I managed to get a few details out of her, but it wasn't much."

"It was just really vague details," Dylan told him seriously. "She said she had travelled to Scotland and the Amazon as well as London, but when we told pointed out that she couldn't have gone somewhere like the Amazon without a passport – something which she has never had – she merely shrugged and said that she had gotten there by a nice sailing ship with a bunch of polite sailors."

The Doctor frowned; they _had_ travelled on a sailing ship with sailors. Admittedly they weren't you average group of sailors, but they did sail.

"I pointed out that she _still_ needed a passport, but she just shrugged the comment off." Sally added.

"Did you see how she got here?"

"No," Sally answered the Doctor frowning. "She was just standing at the door with a confused look on her face. I thought it would get better over time, but it seems to be getting worse! She has changed; she hasn't been reading at all and she would normally always have a book somewhere near her that she'd be reading, she doesn't use the internet or the computer and it's very hard to have a conversation with her that _actually_ makes sense. All she does since coming back is clean, cook, ride her horse and sit in her room listening to music and writing things down and stuff."

The Doctor frowned deeply, getting the feeling that Sally wasn't telling him everything. "Tell me what happened when Bella left with me after we brought her back – what happened with the police?"

"They weren't very happy with me, that's for sure!" she said darkly. "I made up this story that Bella had wrung me from an airport in Italy somewhere saying that distant relatives on her mother's side had turned up out of the blue wanting to take her on a once in a lifetime trip around the world. The police asked _'why would they want to do that'_ and I said that it was because they were an old, childless couple that felt terrible about Bella having such a rubbish and lonely childhood."

"Creative," Jack smirked.

"Bella and I took creative writing in our final year at school," Sally said dismissively.

"Did they believe it?" the Doctor asked curiously.

"Eventually, yeah," Sally said, the Doctor looking at her with raised eyebrows. "Especially after old Edwin Milton confirmed my story by saying that he'd seen a car in Bella's driveway that afternoon when he had driven past."

"Edwin Milton?" the Doctor enquired. "Doesn't he own the pub?"

"He used to be a copper, hence the name of the pub; _The Sleeping Policemen_." Dylan said.

"He was far more than just the local bobby," Jack said, and everyone looked to him frowning. Jack rolled his eyes. "I have done some research since arriving here, Doctor; I don't just hang out at pubs."

"Right," the Doctor said with a slight sceptical expression on his face. "What have you found out then?"

"Until very recently, Milton was the local coroner who serviced places from Bristol across to Bath and the surrounding towns." Jack said. "He was also the man who declared Bella dead when she first went missing – or rather when she was kidnapped."

"Did he now?" the Doctor said quietly, wondering if this man had anything to do with the Trickster. "What happened then?" he asked Sally.

"They wanted me to tell them the next time that Bella contacted me so they could talk to her; I really don't think they believed me at first in all honesty, which was so surprised when Milton backed me up. The following day the local newspaper had an official apology from the Bath Police force admitting that they had made a mistake and that Bella was alive and well and travelling overseas with relatives. I am assuming that they didn't get into contact with Bella, because no one gave them her number."

"They didn't," the Doctor said, exchanging a glance with Jack, both of them thinking along the same lines.

"The police wouldn't admit to making a mistake like that," Jack said. "There is no way in hell."

"No," the Doctor agreed slowly. "There would have had to have been a new inquiry at least and they would have needed to have seen Bella alive with their own lives before they changed the status."

"There sort of was another inquiry," Sally said, earning herself very shocked expressions from the Doctor and Jack. "This bloke came around, said he was part of some 'specials branch' of the police. He came and asked me all these questions about Bella and I had to make up all these things about her mum's relatives. He asked if I thought that Bella was in some kind of trouble and I said she was probably safer than she's ever been because she was with family who actually cared about her, but I really meant you Doctor. He was here nearly two hours before he left and he asked me one more thing, which made me feel a bit uneasy."

"What did he ask you?" the Doctor pressed quietly.

"He asked me how Bella managed to get overseas to Italy without a passport," she said nervously.

"How did you answer that one?" Jack asked moving uncomfortably in his chair, thinking the same as the Doctor was; that it sounded like this man had caught the bluff.

"I told him that it was impossible for anyone to do that and he just smiled and said '_exactly'_." Sally said. "He told me not to worry though, that her name could have just become lost in the system. He says it happens all the time."

"What's this guy's name?" Jack asked. "He sounds like a right –"

"Ingram, I think." Sally said, frowning as she tried to remember.

"Ingram?" both the Doctor and Jack repeated at the same time, recognising the name from a UNIT report that they had read back at Torchwood concerning the events of the Dalek invasion. Was this the same man? If so, why would UNIT have been involved in a simple missing person's case?

"Yeah, but I don't know his first name though," Sally said frowning still. "Why do you ask what happened once you left?"

"Has Bella been back to her own home yet?" the Doctor asked.

"No," Dylan answered him. "She simply refuses to go."

"The Trickster must have given her mind instructions when he wiped her memory." The Doctor said to himself.

"Perhaps that's a good thing, considering the state that her place is in." Jack suggested.

"What do you mean, what's wrong with it?" Dylan asked quickly.

"Bella's whole house has been searched from top to bottom," the Doctor told them, Sally gasping in surprise. "Someone has been searching for –"

The Doctor broke off as there came a small knock at the door and Bella's head appeared shortly afterwards.

"I just made up the two sofas in the living room for you two," she said smiling, looking at the Doctor and Jack.

"Thanks," Jack grinned. "Is that a subtle hint for us to go to bed?"

"No," Bella said warmly. "But you may want to think about it, considering it _is_ half-eleven."

"Half past eleven already?" Dylan gasped, standing up.

"I don't know why you're so surprised," Bella said, looking amused. "I mean, we didn't get home until ten o'clock."

"Oh man! I've got to get up at dawn to help dad with the sheep!" he complained. "I'll see you all tomorrow night sometime." He added, rushing out the door and into the hallway.

"Goodnight!" Bella yelled after him as the front door opened then slammed shut. She added "goodnight everyone," to Sally, the Doctor and Jack and disappeared again.

"C'mon," Sally said, she too getting to her feet. "I'll show you where you can sleep."

They both followed her into the living room, where sheets, blankets and pillows had been placed on the two sofas beside a roaring fire. Sally bade them goodnight and shut the door behind her as she left the room.

The Doctor sunk wearily onto one of the sofas, his head hitting the pillows and his eyes automatically closing in exhaustion. At least he had found her, he thought to himself as sleep quickly began to overcome him. He now had all the time in the world to figure out what to do next…


	6. Ep1 The Sleeping Policeman CH6

_**Author's Note: First and foremost, I need to apologise to you all for taking such al ong time to post this new chapter and even to reply to your comments. Life has been pretty hectic over the past month, so hopefully it will improve from here on in. I promise to catch up on all of your own stories, but be patient as it looks like I am very far behind!**_

_**Anyway, here is the newest chapter. It would seem that this post is full of apologies! I hope you enjoy!**_

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><p>Ch6 – The Doctor's Apology<p>

The Doctor woke with a start, breathing heavily. He had been dreaming of the Trickster; he had been laughing cruelly at the Doctor who was unable to help the unconscious Bella. He shook his head and looked at Jack's watch; six thirty a.m.

He slowly got up, stretching himself as he walked out of the living room and into the hallway, where he made his way to the front door, which he opened quietly.

The warm morning sun could just be seen behind a green, luscious hill that was a few paddocks away and the cloudless sky was slowly lightening. A low fog in traditional British styling, kept the mood of the place down, though despite the sun.

He heard a sudden neigh from around the side of the small cottage, so he followed the sound of hoof beats down the length of the house and past the out-of-place police box to find a sand arena that was surrounded by wooden fence that contained several multi-coloured – and very tall – horse jumps.

Bella was also in the arena, sitting atop a tall, dark bay horse that trotted calmly yet with enough energy to make it seem that Bella was still in control of the pace, around the outside before Bella must have given the aids for her horse to move up into the canter. The Doctor watched as Bella and her horse moved confidently over the obstacles, The Doctor impressed with her riding ability; he had always known that she had ridden horses, he had guessed that the first time he had been in her room almost a year ago, but he had never quite realised just how good she really was.

"She's good isn't she?" Sally said as she wheeled a big, green and white dirt bike towards him. "She is self-taught, so it proves that she's a natural."

"Mmm," the Doctor agreed with a small smile. _She was a natural at many things_, he thought.

"Hey Bella?" she suddenly yelled loudly.

Bella, having just cleared another jump, glanced over to Sally and the Doctor before trotting over to them at the fence.

"Sally, I didn't get to finish my course," Bella complained with a frown, pulling her horse to a halt, which began to sniff the Doctor curiously. "It was a clear round too…"

"Sorry," Sally said with the slightest hint of a smirk on her face.

"You're both up early." Bella observed.

"I'm an early riser," the Doctor shrugged indifferently, patting the horse on his nose.

"Me too," Bella grinned before looking back to Sally. "Are you going somewhere?"

"Yeah, Dad called – woke me up nice and early –"she muttered darkly before continuing again. "Anyway, apparently next doors cows have broken through our connecting boundary fence in the south-east paddock and are eating all out grass that was meant to be for the ewes and lambs in the spring."

"Did you need a hand?" Bella asked, and the Doctor heard a familiar eagerness in her voice.

"Do you mind? I just need some help herding all the cows back onto next door's property – why they can't help me I have no idea!"

Bella smiled, looking back to the Doctor. "Want to come too?"

"No, I will be fine here thanks." The Doctor said.

"Are you sure? I can quickly saddle up one of the other horses for you,"

"No thanks," the Doctor answered, resisting the urge to agree. As much as he wanted to go with her, he still needed to find out what was wrong with the TARDIS. "Maybe next time," he suggested.

"Okay," Bella said looking away and the Doctor could have sworn he heard disappointment in her voice. "Let's get going then," she added to Sally. "I've got work in six hours! See you later on, John."

The Doctor gave a slight start at being called John, but he regained enough composure to give her a small grin and a wave before she turned her horse around to walk to the gate.

"We'll be back soon," Sally said quietly to the Doctor. "Are you and Jack okay here?"

"I need to work on the TARDIS," the Doctor told her.

"Your ship… thing?" she asked.

"Yes, my ship _thing_." Agreed the Doctor gingerly, trying not to be offended.

"Right," Sally grinned nervously, climbing onto her bike before turning it on.

"Shouldn't you have a helmet on?" the Doctor asked loudly over the roar of the bike.

"I should, but I don't." Sally grinned mischievously, before accelerating after Bella, who was already halfway across the next field, leaving the Doctor shaking his head in disbelief.

"Teenagers," he sighed as he turned and walked back to the TARDIS.

Turning his key in the lock, he pushed opened the door and winced as he entered. The noise that the TARDIS had been making the night before seemed to have doubled. Rushing forwards, he threw his overcoat over its usual coral pillar before bounding up the ramp to the centre console, quickly pulling the computer screen towards him and typing things into the keyboard.

"Okay, old girl, I've found Bella so now you have got all of my attention, just like I promised." He said looking up to the stationary time rotor. "Now what is it, what's wrong?"

The TARDIS continued to groan in a sick machine kind-of-way while the scan moved along at an alarmingly slow rate.

"Did I work you too hard trying to find Bella?" he asked aloud guiltily. "No, that can't be it, you were drawing power from the rift in the Medusa Cascade! And besides, I have put you through worse before."

He started to pace backwards and forwards, running his hands through his hair a few times. "Did you digest something that you shouldn't have?" he pondered, but the TARDIS didn't respond which made him give a heavy sigh. "Are you angry at me for putting Bella first?"

No answer.

"Because I'm sorry, but I had to, you know that –"

"It always gets ugly when another woman gets involved."

The Doctor turned towards the doorway to see Jack walking slowly towards him up the ramp. Despite Jack's light, joking tone, the Doctor could hear concern and alarm in his voice.

"She's gotten worse," Jack observed with a frown.

The Doctor looked back to the time rotor, worry etched into every inch of his face. His TARDIS was sick, very sick and he couldn't think of how to help her. Perhaps a wire had fallen out of place, or some dirt had gotten in between one of the various parts? _No_, he thought to himself, _this was much bigger than that_.

The Doctor closed his eyes and just stood listening to the TARDIS. It felt strange, he felt somehow disconnected with her, almost like the psychic link was no longer there. But that was in itself impossible; the psychic link was part of the TARDIS, who she is, what she does. If something was interfering with the heart of the TARDIS – well, that was fearsome technology.

He stopped thinking and just listened. It sounded as though all of the TARDIS's thoughts and power was being put into something external either willingly or being drained by something and he didn't like it one bit. The sound made goose-pimples form on his skin; she sounded so sick, so unwell, like whatever the problem was it was physically hurting her, making her scream in pain…

The Doctor shivered and opened his eyes, his hearts physically aching at that last, horrid thought. He strode forward a few paces, retrieving a small hook from inside his jacket and bent down to pull part of the corrugated iron floor up. Leaning it against the console, he put the hook back inside his jack so he wouldn't lose it and jumped down into the depths of the TARDIS.

"Does she need an oil change?" Jack suggested lamely in a desperate attempt to lighten the mood. "How about a new battery? Maybe she just needs to go for a quick spin around the block?"

"She isn't a car Jack!" the Doctor snapped, popping his head back up to stare angrily at Jack. He sighed and looked away from him. "Even if a quick trip could help her, I couldn't go; there is too much of a risk of not landing on the right day or at the right time. I can't leave Bella."

Jack nodded solemnly. "Is there anything that I can do?" he asked helplessly. Even though he was a man from the fifty-first century that knew a lot about various technologies, he felt that a TARDIS was way out of his league, unless it had something to do with reconnecting wires from an extrapolator gun.

"Maybe, I just don't know yet," the Doctor said kindly, disappearing once again into the depths of the TARDIS.

Hours passed incredibly slowly in the Time Ship that day as the Doctor worked below the centre console, sonicing wires, pulling various components apart and grumbling loudly when something didn't turn out the way he planned.

Jack sat above him on the chair beside the console, looking through the corrugated iron floor, occasionally holding something for the Doctor or passing something down to him. At one point he had to go searching for a few tools that had wandered from the toolbox, and he was thankful for something to do.

After finding the blow-torch beside the swimming pool under one of the chairs (where the TARDIS's sick tones could still be heard), he headed back to the console room, where he sat beside the hole in the floor and lowered the blow-torch down, waiting for the Doctor to take it from him.

"Thanks," said the Doctor, relieving Jack of the blow-torch. "Where was it?"

"Beside the pool,"

"The pool?" the Doctor repeated, poking his head up to stare at Jack incredulously. "What on Earth was it doing down there?"

"No idea," Jack said lightly.

The Doctor shrugged before disappearing again, and moments later Jack heard the blow-torch fire up.

Eventually, the Doctor surfaced again, pulling off his welding mask and throwing it onto the floor in front of him.

"What time is it?" he asked.

"Eight-thirty," Jack answered. "P.M." he added to clarify.

The Doctor gave a heavy sigh. "We'd better go and see if Bella is back yet."

"And the TARDIS?" asked Jack.

"Isn't going anywhere," the Doctor said sadly feeling quite disheartened as he lifted himself out of the hole.

Jack followed the Doctor out of the TARDIS and into the cool night air as a voice rang out.

"_Finally,_" said Sally from the doorway of the house. "I've been waiting for you two to come out of that little box!"

"Oi!" the Doctor complained.

"Sorry," Sally grinned.

"Is something wrong?" Jack enquired.

"No, Bella is fine – she shouldn't be home for another half-an-hour," Sally said, pulling the two men inside and into the warmth, "Which is good actually, because I need to show you something."

The Doctor exchanged a confused glance with Jack and followed Sally, who still had a tight hold on the Doctor's arm, down the hallway.

Page | 5


	7. Ep1 The Sleeping Policeman CH7

_**Author's note**** So here is the next chapter! It is a bit longer, but it is slowly starting to answer some of the questions. I hope that you will enjoy it!**_

_**Oh, and if any of you are interested, I have started a new story on the sister site Fictionpress. It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but if you are a member of that site, or even if you would just like to have a read here is the link .com/~stridersgirl89**_

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><p>Ep1 The Sleeping Policeman Ch7<p>

They stopped at the door and the Doctor and Jack looked expectantly to Sally.

"It's Bella's room," she said slowly before opening the door and walking in, the other two following her in and looking around.

The bed took up most of the space in the middle of the small room. There was a desk under the window that was covered in books and paper and there were no personal items in the room whatsoever.

"It's just a bedroom." Jack said slowly.

"Turn around and close the door." Sally instructed quietly making Jack raise his eyebrows and moved to close the door, seeing as he was closest.

"Oh my God!" gasped Jack as the Doctor pushed him out of the way to get a closer look at what was stuck on the back of the bedroom door.

Hundreds of drawings had been stuck to the door with sticky tape; drawings that the Doctor could easily recognise. There was a red Dalek, some horrid looking Slitheen, the Judoon, the massive bird-like Mammonteal, plus many others like the terrifying Cybermen, the kind-faced Mantises and even the ghost-like alien Sirena that they had encountered at Torchwood only a few weeks ago.

"She remembers everything." Jack said shocked as the Doctor continued to stare at the back of the door open mouthed.

"I am gathering the more important things are in here," Sally said, making them look back to her to find that she had picked up a large cardboard box and placed it on the bed. "From what I have flicked through, the stories, the better drawings, mostly of people, are here. I don't know if you have noticed, but she hasn't taken off that chain that's around her neck with the key on it either."

The Doctor slowly moved forward and picked up a black book and flipped it open, seeing the familiar face of Sarah Jane sketched skilfully onto the page. He continued flicking through the think pages, seeing her father's face, faces belonging to the Amazonian tribesmen, as well as the faces of Captain Brooks and midshipman Ryan from the Eternal's ship as Jack picked up a thick notebook and started to scan through it.

"It's all here," Jack said. "Everything we've ever done together, plus more that I had no idea about –"he paused, reading something. "- I knew you snogged her when you were human again, oh, Martha would be so peeved!" he added somewhat triumphantly, the word '_snogged_' sounding strange with an American accent. "She hasn't forgotten a thing!"

The Doctor didn't respond to him as he continued to flick absentmindedly through the pages, thinking that this all felt very familiar to him. "I thought that you said that when Bella arrived here all she had was her iPod and her mobile phone." He asked as he saw a picture of the TARDIS with the words '_time and relative dimension in space_' written underneath it.

"I did," Sally said. "She's done all this in six days."

The Doctor came to the final page in the sketchbook and found a rather large and detailed portrait of himself grinning. His eyes narrowed. _This was too familiar_, but he didn't think how it could be relevant, it was impossible.

"How could she do all this in _six_ days?" Jack asked.

"Bella doesn't sleep much these days." Sally told him sadly.

"What do you mean?" the Doctor asked sharply, tearing his eyes away from the page.

"She has these terrible nightmares and she gets so worked up and it is only getting worse and worse every night." Sally explained shivering slightly. "I can hardly calm her down anymore."

"Has she said what she has been dreaming about?" the Doctor asked frowning.

Sally shook her head. "Not really, she always avoids answering, but what I can gather from all the words that she mumbles out every night it's this; the faceless monster." She finished somewhat dramatically as she handed the Doctor another book, already open.

He took it slowly and his brown eyes fell onto the almost faceless, black-robed figure that he knew to be the Trickster. Bella must have been dreaming about the day that she had been taken by the Trickster and had her memory wiped. The Doctor could no longer ignore the similarities, not if Bella was constantly dreaming of that.

When the Doctor had become human in order to hide from the families of Blood and Pain respectively, both times he had dreamt of what had happened leading up to the cause of his transformation almost every night. It almost felt like his mind or possibly even the TARDIS wanted to remind him of who and what he truly was. Forehead creased in concentration, he pondered on what this could possibly mean.

Could it mean that Bella's mind was far stronger than even he imagined or was something helping her fight off the Trickster's hold? Just as his mind seemed to explode with thousands of possibilities, his thoughts were rudely interrupted.

"What the _hell_ are you doing in my bedroom?"

The door had opened, and the Doctor, Jack and Sally all looked around to find Bella staring at them all furiously, her eyes quickly falling onto the books and papers in all of their hands. She rushed forwards, snatching the books from them all and holding them tightly and protectively to her chest.

"Sally?" she said, shaking slightly with rage.

Sally looked down, unable to look her friend in the eyes. "Yes?" she said innocently.

Her response seemed to anger Bella further. "What are you doing in here looking through my _private_ notes? I trusted you! And then I come home to find you _snooping_ through my things? What, may I ask, have I done to deserve this?"

"I'm sorry Bella," Sally said guiltily, thinking that she was over-reacting slightly. "I'm just trying to help –"

"Help?" repeated Bella shrilly. "What for, I don't need any help, I am perfectly fine –"

"You are not!" Sally said sternly and the Doctor looked to her, shaking his head to tell her to drop it but Sally chose to ignore him. "You turn up on my doorstep seven days ago with nothing, with no proper memories of the past year that you have spent travelling with _this_ man!" she finished somewhat heatedly, pointing to the Doctor.

"Don't be ridiculous," Bella scoffed after glancing at the Doctor briefly. "I think I would have remembered travelling with a friend of yours –"

"Bella, he _isn't_ a friend of my family's." Sally said despite the Doctor's constant warnings. "He's a friend of _yours_, a pretty good one by the looks of things. I only know him through you!"

"I have never seen him before in my life." Bella said quietly, looking suddenly frightened and the Doctor tried to ignore the pain that a sentence like that caused him.

"_Bella_!" yelled Sally in exasperation, snatching one of the sketchbooks out of Bella's arms and opening it up next to the Doctor's face.

"Sally!" the Doctor tried to object, but Sally ignored him yet again.

"I don't…" Bella said, looking from the drawing she had done to the real thing, the Doctor looking back to her. She looked so confused and frightened and the Doctor suddenly felt very scared.

"He isn't real," Bella whispered, her voice trembling as she looked directly into the Doctor's eyes. "That man in my drawing, he isn't – he can't… he is just part of my imagination… never real…"

"How can you say that when he is standing right in front of you?" shouted Sally and Bella took a few, frightened steps backwards, blinking back confused tears and putting her hand to her forehead, a brief look of pain flashing across her face.

"Stop!" the Doctor said angrily, snatching the book out of Sally's hands. "I don't know what will happens if she remembers!"

"But she _does _remember, clearly!" Sally argued, pointing at the sketchbook and the Doctor could tell she was arguing because it scared her seeing Bella in her current state.

"No, it is her subconscious memories;" the Doctor argued back, "forcing her to remember like this could kill her!"

"Bella" said Jack gently, seeing that Bella was becoming paler and paler by the second. "It's okay."

Bella looked to him thankfully before shaking her head in confusion.

"Bella we can help you," the Doctor said quietly. "I promise," he added softly.

She bit her lip, her hand brushing across her forehead again.

"You know who he is, don't you, you remember, you have to, you aren't my Bella." Sally pressed. "You travelled with him into space –"

"Stop," said Jack before the Doctor even had the chance to as they all saw another look of pain flash across her pale face.

"I don't… I don't know," she whispered, her hand once again on her forehead. She frowned and took another step back before swaying violently.

The Doctor made to rush forward, but Bella stopped him.

"No Doctor," she gasped, utter agony spread right across her entire face. "You can't… you can't help me now…"

The Doctor suddenly gripped onto his own forehead, a rush of pain paralysing him momentarily. He suddenly felt the full power of the TARDIS's psychic link surge through his mind before vanishing again moments later, leaving the Doctor feeling dazed and exhausted. He lowered his hands from his head, the pain having disappeared as quickly as it came, and looked emotionally to Bella, who seemed to be struggling to stay upright.

_She had said his name…_

"What is going on in here?" said Dylan, who poked his head through the doorway. "I get home after a long day and find you all yelling at each other – Bella, what's wrong?"

"I don't know," she answered him tearfully, turning to him so that the Doctor could no longer see her face. "I feel like I am missing something important… someone I need… my head hurts so much!"

"What have you done?" Dylan accused angrily, looking to the Doctor.

"Dylan, it wasn't him," Sally said quickly. "It was m-"

"Thought you could just stroll back in from saving the universe in your stupid blue police box –"

"Dylan!" the Doctor gasped, his eyes on the back of Bella's head as she swayed violently again. "You need to stop right now!"

"No!" he yelled. Clearly he had been wanting to get this out of his system since the Doctor had arrived. "You turn up out of nowhere and take her away from the people who have known Bella her whole life and who _actually_ love her, ruining everything! Look at everything you've done! Her memory's gone, her house has been ruined and if those stories that she's written are anything to go by she would have to be emotionally destroyed, all because of you!"

"Bella!" the Doctor yelled as Bella fell backwards, the Doctor managing to catch her before she hit the floor.

"Idiot!" said Jack harshly to Dylan, who was looking down to Bella horrified. "You come in here mouthing off, after we just said that we didn't know what would happened if we forced her to remember –"

"And how exactly would I have known that?" Dylan asked defensively. "I wasn't in the room!"

"That's why you don't start mouthing off about things that your tiny little mind knows nothing about!"

"Excuse me?" Dylan shouted, sounding very offended. "So if you are such a great friend, where were you when he abandoned her?"

"Jack, that's enough." The Doctor said quietly in an attempt to shut them both up. "Neither of you are helping at all."

Jack glared angrily at Dylan, who continued to stare angrily back at him, as the Doctor lifted Bella up off the floor. Sally quickly pulled the box off the bed and the Doctor lowered Bella onto it before taking a seat on the edge of the bed beside her.

"Will she be okay?" Sally whispered with guilt in her voice.

"I don't know, because I haven't figured everything out yet." The Doctor said gently, just watching Bella's face.

Sally nodded before looking angrily up to her older brother. "We both made a promise not to read those stories that she'd written after we found them."

"I only read one of the entries," he answered her angrily. "It was the one where _John Smith_ took advantage of her –"

"You're only jealous that it wasn't you!" Jack muttered immaturely, making the Doctor cringe slightly.

"Whatever." Dylan said angrily before storming out of the room, slamming his bedroom door as he went.

Silence fell and the events of the last half hour gave the Doctor plenty to think about, the trouble was, he had no idea where to start.

As he had thought before, the similarities between how Bella was acting and her memory loss to when he had been human were mounting the more he thought about it, but he was seriously doubted that they could be connected. It just wasn't possible, even _if_ the Trickster had somehow gotten his hands on another TARDIS (which in itself was impossible) there was no way that he could have used the Chameleon Arch on Bella because she wasn't a Time Lord, so nothing would have happened.

No, that couldn't have anything to do with it, the TARDIS couldn't be involved. But then he remembered the moment that Bella had said his name. He could feel the TARDIS inside his head like he normally could, so _maybe_ the TARDIS was somehow involved, helping Bella fight what the Trickster had done. Frowning, he gently reached over and touched Bella's forehead, which felt as though it were on fire.

"She has a fever," he said quietly to himself, as Jack and Sally watched his every move.

He had honestly thought that a fever would be impossible for Bella to have, considering she shouldn't be able to get sick, which made him think that whatever was happening inside her mind was equivalent to one epic battle that a lot of energy was going into. With a sudden jolt, the Doctor managed to piece together two impossible things. Something was putting an incredible amount of energy into helping Bella fight to keep her memories, and the TARDIS – his wonderful, brilliant TARDIS – was putting every available bit of energy she had into something apparently important. What if – and the Doctor admitted it was a very _big_ what if – it was the TARDIS helping Bella hold onto her memories?

"Doctor, she's having another nightmare." Sally said, interrupting the Doctor's rather genius train of thought.

"It's not _another _one," he said quietly, watching Bella stir in her sleep. "She's been having the same nightmare for the past week."

Sally gave a small gasp as the Doctor reached out and touched Bella's arm to try and calm her down. She'd been murmuring and muttering in her sleep, her face had become pale again and her whole body had broken out in a cold sweat. At the Doctor's touch, however, she became still and silent, her expression softening.

He watched her sadly for a few moments before standing up. "I will be in the TARDIS if anything happens," he said, moving to the door.

Sally made a move to stop him but Jack shook his head, so she remained where she was, perplexed by absolutely everything.


	8. Ep1 The Sleeping Policeman CH8

_**Author's note: This chapter is long. Lots of information. It is all starting to come together I suppose. I hope you enjoy.**_

_**As always, reviews are very much appreciated as they help me improve!**_

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><p><strong>Chapter Eight: Split investigations<strong>

Bella sat upright giving a small gasp. She was suddenly wide awake, her bedroom slowly filling with a very soft light from the gap in her curtains. Looking to her right she found Sally asleep in the chair beside her bed, sitting in what looked to be a very uncomfortable position. She slowly glanced in front of her to where Sally's friend Jack was asleep on the floor leaning against the wall.

She frowned, trying to remember why she had woken so suddenly and slowly, it came back to her. She had been having this strange, yet amazing dream about these aliens who had been pretending to be her former guardians, Mary and Mark. They had been so tall, their skin a brilliant shade of bright green, their eyes black and their claws long and sharp. There had been five adults in all and two young children, who had, at one point in the dream, sat on her and nearly squished her.

There had also been a man. He was tall, smart and brave, as well as incredibly kind. He had a contagious smile and an infectious sense of adventure. He had saved Bella's life in the dream and he had tried to help her escape.

She felt that it was all very strange; she could have sworn that she's had the dream before and the man felt very familiar. In fact, she had dreamt of him a lot, but today she felt as though the familiarity was more than that. She felt a sudden need to go back to her home. She couldn't explain it, it was very out-of-the-blue, yet she wondered why she hadn't gone back sooner, why she had come to stay with Sally at all. She couldn't remember making a conscious decision to stay with her. Now that she thought of it, there was a lot that she wasn't too sure on anymore, and that made her feel incredibly uneasy. Feeling enigmatic about her current situation, she decided to go back to her house, thinking that for some reason it was where she needed to be today.

Quietly, she slowly climbed out of bed, tiptoeing past Sally and walking over Jack's legs to open her cupboard to get out her clothes and her boots before walking back over Jack and out her already open door.

She got dressed in the bathroom quickly, brushing her teeth and pulling her hair into a low, tight bun before looking at her reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of the door. Even though she was in her own clothes, she didn't feel like herself in the slightest. She felt different, she felt wrong. Something was very wrong and something important was missing, she just didn't know what it was…

Picking up her boots in her hands, she crept out of the bathroom, down the hallway and towards the front door, desperate not to wake anyone up; she had no idea how to explain what she was doing and she didn't want anyone to try and stop her. It was important, she could feel it.

She stepped into the small cloak room and pulled on her black leather, knee-length riding boots, pulled on a heavy coat, put a pair of thick riding gloves in her pocket and grabbed her black riding helmet before opening the front door and stepping into fresh snow.

Normally, the sight of snow would make her grin like a child, but today it made her feel slightly ill. Gingerly, she walked through it towards the stables, stopping only once to glance back over her shoulder. She had felt as though someone was there, that someone had been watching her, despite the fact that she could see nothing there. Ignoring the strange feeling in her mind, she trudged to the stables where a fond nicker greeted her.

Yet another thing that she couldn't understand; why was her horse, her absolute pride and joy, at Sally's house as opposed to her own? Shaking her head, before placing her hand to her forehead due to the headache that only seemed to be getting worse, she wondered if it were possible that she suddenly had gotten early onset Alzheimers.

"Good morning, Amund." She said kindly to her horse, who had poked his head out of his stall. "Time to do some investigating, I think."

- O -

The Doctor had been standing in the doorway of the TARDIS when Bella had reluctantly stepped into the snow. He had seen her hesitate, and then walk almost begrudgingly towards the stables. She had hesitated again, stopping to look back behind her, straight at him and the TARDIS, but he knew that she hadn't seem either of them.

He stepped out of the TARDIS, following Bella's footprints wearily around the house towards the thick-stoned stables. He stopped beside a tall tree, his face troubled as he watched Bella slowly saddle-up her horse. He wondered what she was up to, especially since her expression didn't sit right with him; she was frowning, obviously deep in thought, a slight look of determination filtering through her frown.

He managed to stay out of sight as Bella led her horse from his stall and putting on her riding helmet before mounting somewhat gracefully. He wasn't sure how Bella would react to seeing him after what had happened the night before, and in all honesty, he didn't want to find out, not until he knew what the Trickster had truly done to her, and if it were at all possible to get her memories back. He shivered slightly, not wanting to think of the possibility of Bella not being able to get her memory back; it would be just like Donna all over again.

He stood by the tree, watching Bella ride slowly away until he could no longer see her in the distance, where he headed back towards the TARDIS, hands in his pockets. He noticed shortly thereafter that Sally was bounding out of the house looking worried and Jack followed behind her.

"Doctor –"

"She's already gone." The Doctor said quietly, trying to keep his voice as emotionless as possible, which was quite difficult, considering he felt as though he was on the verge of losing yet another companion.

"We need to go after her," Sally said, assuming that Bella had taken her horse, so she had begun to move towards the stables. "Who knows where she'll go and what she'll do."

The Doctor quickly shook his head. "We have more important things to do." He said gravely, making Sally stop and turn back, staring at him unbelievingly. Even Jack looked taken aback.

"Like what?" she enquired angrily, hoping that the Doctor wasn't putting Bella second to his boxed _spaceship_. If he did, she felt that she would definitely need to wollop him.

"Like finding out who is alive that shouldn't be." The Doctor said, his hands still in his pockets, and Sally admitted that it did sound pretty important. "And I know just who to start with." He added.

"Who?" asked Jack and Sally at the same time.

"Edwin Milton." The Doctor stated and Jack nodded in a fierce kind of approval, both of them turning towards Jack's car.

Sally frowned, looking from the retreating men back to the stables, knowing that someone should really check on Bella to make sure that she was okay. She looked back to the two men and found the Doctor waiting for her.

"Come on," he said sounding exasperated, as if waiting for her to move forward.

"Really?" asked Sally shocked.

The Doctor grinned at her, a true, proper smile, the first one she'd seen since he had arrived, and Sally took that as a yes and ran forward to catch up to him.

"We aren't all going to fit in my car." Jack pointed out slowly.

"Can we not go in the police box?" Sally asked curiously, watching the Doctor very closely.

The Doctor shook his head. "No."

Assuming that he wasn't going to give any explanation, Sally offered to drive them. "We can take my car, if you want?"

"That'll do." The Doctor said and he and Jack followed Sally towards her little, white Toyota.

"Still no improvement then?" Sally heard Jack ask the Doctor as they walked.

"No, it's the opposite really," he admitted slowly. "She's gotten worse."

"Have you any idea what is causing it? Jack pressed and Sally could hear genuine concern in his voice.

"I have a hunch," the Doctor answered but he didn't elaborate.

From inside the house at his bedroom window, Dylan had watched the whole scene unfold before him. It stung him a little to see his sister leave with the Doctor so eagerly. It was one thing for Bella to do that, but his own sister?

As he watched Sally's car disappear down the long driveway, he quickly got dressed, grabbed his bike helmet and walked outside and into the shed to get his dirt bike. He needed to tell Bella how he felt about this whole mess before it was too late, before she remembered everything again. If he managed to do that, she might just stay with him instead of the Doctor.

- O -

"So – uh – what is it that we are going to say exactly?" Sally asked the Doctor and Jack nervously as the three of them walked towards _the Sleeping Policeman_. "'Ah – hi, how are you? We were just wondering if you've died recently."

The Doctor looked innocently to her. "Yes." He said and she stared horrified at him. "Look, sometimes it's just best to come straight out and ask…"

They had reached the front door and came to a halt.

"It's locked," Sally said feeling slightly disappointed. "Now what are we going to do?"

"Bless," Jack said condescendingly as the Doctor reached into his overcoat and pulled out his sonic screwdriver and pointing it at the lock. It buzzed loudly for a few moments before the lock clicked and the door opened.

Smiling slightly at Sally's shocked expression, the Doctor pushed the door fully open.

"Try and act normal Sally." He smirked as she stared open-mouthed at him. "Otherwise people might think we are breaking and entering."

"But –"Sally tried to protest.

"Come on," the Doctor said as Jack gave a laugh, putting his hands on her shoulders to _guide_ her into the empty, dark pub.

- O -

Bella dismounted from her tall horse, staring at her house in wonder. Pulling the reins over Amund's head, she led him through her front gate.

Her home had fallen completely into disrepair; her once flourishing garden had died, weeds having overrun everything. It looked to her like at least a year's growth, including the once well-trimmed lawn. All her hard work over most of her life seemed to have disappeared. She couldn't understand how this could have happened; she hadn't been gone that long. In fact, she couldn't even remember leaving at all…

She took her horse around the back and left him by the back door, going up the back stairs, taking her helmet off and pushed open the back door and squeezed her was through the vines into the music room.

Bella looked around in horror, seeing that practically everything that she owned, every item in her house had been upturned, opened or damaged. The paintings on the walls hung at odd angles and the piano - one of her most loved things in her home – had one of its legs missing.

Blinking back tears, she walked over all the bits of upturned furniture, the broken acoustic guitar and her now broken violin (which was probably her most prized possession) and into the hallway to check every other room in the house and discovered that it was all the same. Muddy, booted footprints lined the floor and large scratches caused the wallpaper to hang off the walls, in her room particularly, where all her photographs had been ripped from the walls.

_What has happened here_, she thought emotionally, sliding down the wall beside her, _why can't I remember_? She asked herself, hitting herself in the head out of sheer frustration. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to calm herself down.

The last thing that she could honestly remember was sitting on her own in the living room with a bag of biscuits watching _Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire_ on the TV; after that, nothing. Plus she was still a little fuzzy on what had happened before that too because she couldn't remember when or why Mary and Mark left. She had a nagging feeling in her mind that it had been because of something in the small shed to the side of the house.

After slowly getting back on her feet, she walked back downstairs through the music room and into the stormy weather, the clouds creating ominous shadows everywhere she looked. Picking up her horses reins she made her way to examine the shed, but someone called out to her.

"There you are!" Dylan said thankfully as he walked towards her, carrying his bike helmet under his left arm. "I've been worried about you."

"There was nothing to be concerned about," Bella said to him stiffly. This was a time that she wanted to be alone, not have someone else with her; all she wanted to do was to go to her father's shed because she knew that everything would make sense to her then.

"Of course there was," Dylan told her sternly. "We all wake up and you've already gone –"

"You know that I ride early, Dylan," Bella interrupted him coolly. "So why are you really here?"

He frowned at her. "Did you have a bad night's sleep or something?"

"No," Bella said. "I actually had one of the best night's sleeps that I've had in a long time."

"Right, so why are you being so narky then?" Dylan said, seeming slightly put out after hearing her say this.

"I'm not," Bella said hotly. "You're the one who looks like they've got a pole up –"

"Bella!" he complained.

"Well you do!" she blushed at his reprimanding. "Don't think I haven't noticed your behaviour towards that Smith bloke, I can't understand what your problem with him is really."

Dylan looked away from her, pouting slightly.

"So, what is it that you wanted?" Bella pressed. She felt like she was wasting precious time.

"I want you to stay with me." He said quietly, not meeting Bella's eyes.

She looked to him startled. "Dylan – what do you mean?"

He looked to her. "He'll fix it – I know he will. I've seen the way he looks at you. He'll find a way to make you remember and then you'll leave and you won't come back. But _I_ want you to stay –"

"What on earth are you going on about, Dylan?" Bella asked confused, slightly concerned for her friend's mental wellbeing.

"You and the Doctor," Dylan sighed, frustrated. "It isn't right, Bella – he's dangerous and being around him could get you killed! I mean, whoever did this to your house was obviously looking for something on the Doctor because – well, you're not too important to anyone, are you?"

"Not important?" she repeated furiously, glaring at him. "I will have you know that my mother's father was the _king_ of Nealon –"

"Oh yeah, what's that then, some old country estate over in Wales?" Dylan scoffed and Bella didn't answer because she didn't have a clue what she was going on about.

"Well, excuse me for not bowing, my _ladyship._" He continued obnoxiously.

"Shut up," Bella snapped, turning away from him.

"See what I mean, that guy has seriously changed you –"

"Dylan, I have no idea who or what you are talking about!" Bella shouted angrily at him.

"You –"he yelled back, "- fell in love with some strange, tall man with _stupid_ hair and went of travelling with him; leaving me here with no goodbye, no explanation, nothing!"

Bella stared at him for a few moments, opening and closing her mouth a few times before shrieking, "WHAT?"

"You know how I feel about you," Dylan said angrily. "You knew that I loved you the moment I kissed you –"

"And _you've_ known for years that my feelings towards you were not the same." Bella said sternly. "When you kissed me it was a moment of weakness, I was distracted by the dangerous situation that we had been in!" she finished, not actually able to remember what the dangerous situation actually had been.

"But you could have loved me back!" Dylan said, half pleading to her now. "Can't you see, another week or so and I could have shown you that you actually loved me back –"

"You make it sound as though I am some dog that you are trying to train!" Bella cried outraged.

"That isn't what I meant!" Dylan said hastily.

"I don't care what you meant, the fact is that I have never loved you like that and you know it!" Bella said angrily. "Just accept that I have found someone else –"

"Who?" he asked quickly.

"What?" she asked suddenly confused.

"You said that you had found someone else, who is it?" Dylan asked and he couldn't stop himself; he knew that he could be putting Bella at risk, especially after last night, but he wanted to hear the three words that he was so desperate to hear. "This mysterious man, who is he?"

Bella bit her lip, hesitating, looking as though she was on the verge of tears. "I – I don't know."

"I didn't think so," Dylan said, giving a satisfied smile.

Bella looked at him feeling flustered and upset. Dylan obviously knew something that she didn't and she felt that he was being incredibly cruel about it. Between what had happened to her home and what Dylan had all but said, Bella got the feeling that her memory had been lost or something like that. It was the only explanation that she thought was plausible. The feeling that she was missing something had grown increasingly stronger and what she herself had just said only made her feel that it was true. Her head felt like it was about to explode and she didn't know how much more she could withstand. She needed to see inside the shed.

"If you got what you came for," Bella began coldly, "Which you undoubtedly have, I would like you to leave."

"What?"

"I want you to leave." She repeated. "Go home, get off my property, I don't want to be around you anymore."

Dylan stared at her unbelievingly. "You aren't serious?"

"Go," Bella whispered.

He continued to stare at her for a few moments before he gave a hollow laugh. "What has he done to you?" he asked quietly, his voice full of disappointment and pain. He took one last look at her, shaking his head in displeasure before walking away from her.

As Bella heard his dirt bike start up somewhere in her front yard, Bella sunk to the ground where she stood, silent tears falling down her pale face. She gripped tightly onto her horse's reins, feeling completely along, more along than she had felt in years.

Page | 8


	9. Ep1 The Sleeping Policeman CH9

_**Author's note: Okay, so it is a doosy of a chapter this time. It's long, and it's full of information. I just hope that it isn't too much for everyone. It was the only place I could end the chapter. Hopefully it all makes sense. Gosh, so much going on!**_

_**Please let me know what you think of it; I can't improve unless you tell me what I am doing wrong :P**_

_**Enjoy!**_

* * *

><p>Sally looked around the dark and empty pub, shivering slightly. The wooden shutters on the big windows managed to block out most of the little sunlight that was coming from outside and she felt that it was all rather dark and creepy and soon found herself bumping into a think wooden chair.<p>

"Shh!" the Doctor said quietly.

"Sorry," Sally whispered back, rubbing her shin as she stood on one leg, glancing over to him.

In all honesty, she couldn't believe what she was doing. Breaking into someone's home and workplace to see if the owner of the home is dead or not so they could get Bella's memory back and stop an evil alien monster from destroying the Universe. Insane; this time last year, Sally Brenner still didn't believe in aliens, even after the so-called Dalek attack, yet here she was, standing beside one – even _if_ he did look human, he was the owner of a very _unique_ space ship. She still couldn't believe all the stuff the Doctor had said about parallel universes and that he and Bella travelled around saving everyone…

"Jack, what are you doing?" the Doctor whispered, looking over to Jack who had stepped behind the tall wooden bar. "Is this really the time?"

"Just so you know, Doctor, I don't drink," Jack said quietly back, disappearing as he knelt down as the Doctor and Sally glanced at each other before he stood back up. "Since Rose's little intervention actually. Besides," he said putting a heavy looking book down on the counter. "If anything strange has happened over the past few months, it'll show up in the book-keeping."

The Doctor grinned and made his way behind the bar to stand beside Jack, Sally following him, thinking that the two men had a very different kind of relationship to what she was expecting. They seemed incredibly close, yet she felt that there was something that seemed to be getting in the way…

"Brilliant," the Doctor smiled.

"I know," Jack answered confidently, causing the Doctor to roll his eyes.

"Anything in there?" whispered Sally curiously.

"Give me a minute." Jack said as he began flicking through the book's pages.

Sally watched the Doctor wander around somewhat impatiently, opening drawers and cupboards, poking through rubbish and looking at basically anything he could get his hands on, his face alight with childish curiosity.

"Found it," Jack said and Sally looked over his shoulder.

"What is it?" the Doctor asked, bounding over to them and standing on the opposite side of the counter.

"The pub didn't open for a week," Jack said, "from the twenty-third to the thirtieth of April last year.

"Was there any reason?" the Doctor asked, feeling that something sounded familiar about those dates.

"We all thought that he's gone missing too," Sally told him. "He didn't show up for work on the twenty-third – here or up in Bath, but apparently he was just unwell. He didn't open the pub, but he did aid in Bella's disappearance case briefly before this on the twentieth and then again when he confirmed my story later on."

"He declared her dead." Jack assumed.

"Then he is definitely the one." The Doctor declared.

"How do you know?" Sally questioned him, confused as to how this information confirmed anything at all.

"This about the dates, Sally." The Doctor said quietly, looking at her intently. "When was the first time I met Bella Lumic?"

"Uh –"

"Saturday the fourth of April." The Doctor said. "And then what was the date of Bella's disappearance?"

"Friday the seventeenth," Sally said almost at once, knowing it was not a date that she would ever be able to forget. "She still hasn't told me what really happened, you know."

"Yes she has," the Doctor said seriously and Sally shook her head in disbelief. "Now, that newspaper that we found at her house after we brought her back said that she's been declared dead –"

"That was on the Monday," Sally said. "In all honesty, I thought it had all happened a bit quick, considering you need to be missing for over seven years normally to be considered dead, but all the investigators said that because of the obvious signs of a struggle –"

"That would have been the Judoon," interjected the Doctor.

"- and the lack of a motive plus no ransom it was the only explanation so we would have to wait for her body to turn up somewhere… suicide crossed their mind too…" she added in an undertone, giving a shudder. "But then you guys came back on the twenty-fourth –"

"The day _after_ Milton goes missing." The Doctor said pointedly.

"- And I go and tell the police that Bella is actually alive –"

"Then Edwin Milton turns up again to collaborate your story which was a complete lie in the first place." The Doctor added.

Sally frowned. "So you are saying that Milton has died?" she asked sceptically.

"Yes," he said. "Think about it; no one saw him for three days and why would a coroner – a man of scientific, legal and law enforcement backgrounds – back up your story _unless_ he knew for a fact that Bella was alive –"

"- Because that Trickster bloke told him!" finished Sally excitedly.

"Exactly!" the Doctor smiled triumphantly.

"Alright Mulder and Scully," Jack said, "but that isn't normally how the Trickster does things."

The Doctor and Sally looked to him, their smiles now gone.

"After our conversation the other night, I sent a quick email to Sarah Jane, asking her about the Trickster." Jack said slowly. "Apparently the first time she had met him, he had gone into her past and made a deal with her best friend, who had died after falling off Blackpool Pier. The deal was that the friend's life was saved if another died in her place."

"Sarah?" the Doctor asked horror-struck

Jack nodded. "One of Sarah Jane's world-saving companions saved the day that time; a girl by the name of Maria Jackson."

The Doctor remained silent for a few moments, still horrified at the thought of Sarah Jane not existing at Bannerman Road; all those times she had saved the universe and his own life. All the aliens that she had helped him defeat; the Wirrn, the Cybermen, the Daleks, the Ice Warriors, the Krynoid, Morbius, the Sontarans, Sutekh and his mummies and the Zygons, plus the ones that she herself – with the help of her young friends – has come across on Earth.

"So – So you're saying that someone else should have died too?" Sally asked someone fearfully.

"If what happened to Sarah Jane is anything to go by," said Jack frankly.

"And who is Sarah Jane?" added Sally.

"A good friend." The Doctor said slowly, his mind racing after this new development before there was a sudden shout.

"What the blazers -!"

The Doctor looked around to his right and saw a short, chubby elderly man who would have been in his late sixties, early seventies with grey hair and a very large waist standing in the doorway that led into the kitchens, looking both shocked and angry.

"Ah," the Doctor said as he moved forward, Jack moving in front of Sally in case the situation got a tad dangerous.

"What are you doing in here?" ordered Milton furiously, glaring at them all in turn. "This is breaking and entering, I say!"

"No, no, we only entered, there was no breaking of anything at all." The Doctor said lightly, yet he was watching Milton very closely. Something was definitely wrong with him and the Doctor wondered how he didn't spot it the other night.

"That door was locked!" Milton said stubbornly.

The Doctor rolled his eyes and held up the black leather wallet that contained his psychic paper. "DCI John Smith, Scotland yard." He said sternly, Milton's dark brown eyes falling onto the paper. "I am here doing a follow up investigation concerning Isabella Lumic and the way it was handled by the Bath Police. This is my colleague DI Harkness and this is Sally Brenner, Miss Lumic's friend, as you are no doubt aware of."

As Milton glanced across to her and Jack, Sally wondered how the Doctor could possibly think that he could get away with such a lie, especially since Milton, who was now looking suspiciously back to the Doctor, had been part of the police service.

"We were wondering, Mr Milton, if we could ask a few questions?" the Doctor asked before continuing without waiting for a response. "Have you had any near fatal accidents lately? Fallen off a roof or ladder or from any other great height? Been hit by a car? Have you woken up to find a creepy, faceless guy watching you sleep?"

"What exactly does this have to do with Miss Lumic?" Milton said, glancing behind him into the kitchen somewhat fearfully.

"Oh, nothing really," the Doctor shrugged, putting his hands in his pockets. "I'm just curious – hence the job with Scotland Yard, you know what it's like; it's a small town though, people notice when someone is in some kind of accident, but speaking of near death experiences, you were the one who declared Miss Lumic deceased a little prematurely, were you not?"

"Is he always like this?" whispered Sally, amazed by how fast the Doctor spoke.

"Yeah," Jack whispered back with a slight smile.

"I was," Milton said after a moment's pause.

"And yet, correct me here if I am wrong," the Doctor continued, beginning to pace back and forth in front of Milton much like a prosecution lawyer would do in a court of law. "You were also the one to back Miss Brenner up concerning her story – and let's face it, all of us here know that the story of Bella travelling with long lost family is frankly a load of codswallop – a very interesting term _codswallop_ and I am not sure I understand the term entirely, but it is a good word – very British, so I will use it here – anyway, I appear to have become side-tracked, where was I?"

"Told you," Jack whispered to Sally, who couldn't believe how fast he changed subject.

"Oh yes!" the Doctor said brightly before his child-like grin vanished, replaced by a look that Sally could only imagine to be deep, furious anger. "You backed up Sally's ridiculous story – ridiculous only because Bella's mother does not and never has had any living relatives on this wonderful planet, and anyone who looked into it seriously enough would be able to see that. Because for all of this to be pulled off, Bella needed to be alive and not have investigators lock her up for questioning; she would be no use to the Trickster as someone who could no longer exist, otherwise what is the point of allowing her to survive?"

A long, tense silence followed in which Sally continued to stare at the Doctor, this time with fear mixed in with the wonder. He had gone from happily rambling about his understanding of a word to staring at Milton with a furious expression and looking as though he was seconds away from throttling him.

"And so the foul, faceless being came to you, giving you the chance to live again but at a cost." The Doctor said his voice dangerously low and shaking slightly with anger. "A cost, I am sure you didn't fully understand because you hardly knew Bella. What did he tell you; that she would be safer back here, that she deserved it? Did he spin you a sad tale of nothing but lies? That she wouldn't be missed, that there was no harm in taking her from where she belonged, where she was happiest?"

"I think that you have me confused with someone else," Milton said calmly, which seemed to enrage the Doctor even more.

"You insignificant little human!" the Doctor said furiously. "You have no idea what damage this could be doing to this planet, to the entire universe! The only reason why the Earth is still in orbit, why everyone is still here and not all transformed into Cybermen, is because Bella Lumic risked _everything_ to keep you safe!"

"I am going to have to ask you to leave now, Mr _Smith_." Milton smiled in a seemingly polite manner, but Sally didn't buy it, nor, apparently did the Doctor.

He took a few steps forward, his face only inches away from Milton's. "I will find out exactly what you've done to Bella and I will make sure that you will regret ever being a part of the Trickster's plans for the rest of your life."

"Is that a threat?" Milton asked, raising his eyebrows.

"No," the Doctor said through clenched teeth, "It's a promise."

Another tense silence followed in which the Doctor glared furiously at Milton, Sally watching nervously from behind Jack.

"Get out." Milton said in almost a hiss.

To Sally's surprise, the Doctor turned and stormed out.

"We still have more questions for you, so – uh – don't go anywhere too far away." Jack said slowly as he too began to head towards the door. "C'mon Sally."

Taking one last look at Milton, who was watching them leave with a dark, trouble expression, Sally followed Jack out of the dark pub and into the dull, grey sunlight that seemed much brighter than it actually was. She saw the Doctor standing on the footpath a little ahead of them, with his back towards them.

"Well, that went well." Jack said sarcastically as both the Doctor and Sally glared at him. "Sorry," he added hastily.

"We didn't really learn much from him did we?" said Sally.

"We've learnt a lot actually." The Doctor said darkly.

"We have?"

"He's as good as confirmed that he is in league with the Trickster." The Doctor said quietly. "Did you not see how he reacted when I mentioned the _creep faceless guy_?"

"Ah," Jack nodded slowly.

"When he glanced back over his shoulder?" Sally asked and the Doctor nodded. "But he looked kind of scared."

"Exactly," the Doctor said. "He may be regretting his decision to help the Trickster, and that may be the key to getting Bella's memory back."

"How exactly?" pondered Jack.

"I have an idea," the Doctor told them quietly, "But this isn't the place to discuss it, come on!"

- O -

From one of the windows in _the Sleeping Policeman_, Milton watched the three of them fearfully. They knew a lot, so much more than he or the Trickster had thought. The Doctor had pieced together nearly everything, and he knew that the Doctor suspected him of so much more. He shivered, remembering the fierce, protective look in the Time Lord's eyes and he knew that if anything permanent happened to his companion he would stay true to his word.

He had heard so much about the Doctor, and if he was honest with himself, had the Trickster mentioned that he would have been involved, he would have seriously considered dying. Maybe that was why the Trickster didn't give many details. Perhaps death _would_ have been the better option?

He's known so little about the girl at the time of the Trickster's apparent _gift_, he was just so eager to have the chance to live, to not die, for the pain to stop, he had agreed, no questions asked. Looking back he felt that he should have known that a faceless monster couldn't be completely trusted. He sighed heavily, wishing that he had someone to confide in, someone to ask for guidance. But he had no one now; he was the only one left. His parents had died some years ago now, and his brothers and sisters – well, he didn't know what had happened to them. He knew that some had perished in the last war, he had seen them die with his own eyes next to him on the muddy battlefield, but he hoped and prayed that some of them had survived the needless violence. Maybe none of them deserved to live, maybe they did, he didn't know. His judgement had begun to blur more and more with each day that passed.

"_You are failing me._" said a voice from in the kitchen, making Milton wince as though someone had physically hurt him.

Reluctantly, and with a hint of fear, Milton walked through the doorway into the large kitchen, looking to the mirror beside the doorway where the familiar figure of the Trickster occupied the frame.

"_The Doctor is dangerously close to the truth and Bella Lumic is on the verge of remembering everything!_"

"Both of which you said could never happen." Milton snapped.

"_There was always a possibility of that blasted Time Lord intervening; he has got to be the worst of all of them!_" the Trickster said angrily and Milton could tell that this fact unnerved the strange creature. "_As for the girl – well, it is all rather strange. It almost seems as though there is some external force is in her mind, trying to help her keep a tight hold of her precious memories._"

The Trickster seemed to ponder this for a few moments before speaking once again. "_I am unaware of how it is happening, but I believe the best thing to do would be to eliminate the Doctor and his freak-of-humanity friend just to be on the safe side._"

"No!" gasped Milton, horrified. "Killing was not part of the deal!"

"_Part of the deal_?" the Trickster repeated with a small smile. "_It was always part of the deal. Just remember _Milton_, the moment Miss Lumic remembers the Doctor and everything that she has ever done with him, I have no more use for you and I will send you back to where I found you; four and a half years in the future, cold, alone and slowly dying._"

Milton glared at the cruel and merciless being, regretting his deal immensely now.

The Trickster grinned, baring his sharp, pointy teeth. "_Kill the Doctor, wipe out any trace of his existence or die. It's your choice._"

The Trickster suddenly vanished from the mirror and Milton sunk onto a nearby chair, covering his old, tired face in his hands.

- O -

Bella sat by herself for a very long time not really knowing what had upset her so much. Eventually she picked herself up, feeling angry. _I won't solve anything by moping about it_, she thought suddenly. It wasn't like her to do this; it wasn't like her to depend on someone else figuring everything out.

Frowning, Bella tried to remember the dream that she had had that morning. She had walked home from work because her guardians had taken her car that day. She had stood at her front gate, admiring her beautiful home when a tall, good looking man had jumped out of the bushes, warning her not to go into her house. Of course, she hadn't listened to him and she had gone inside to find that Mary and Mark, along with some of their strange friends, who had all turned into these horrid, green monsters and chased her into the kitchen. From there, the wondrous man had helped her escape through the window, rather than the door. She smiled slightly as she remembered that they had run hand-in-hand across her front yard only to be caught and taken to her father's old garden shed.

Glancing across the yard she saw that very same shed, covered in ivy and weeds. Slowly, if not a little hesitantly, she left her patient horse standing where he was, and walked towards the shed wishing that she had a Sonic Screwdriver – not that she knew what that was. She knew that it was impossible for there to be a secret underground lair, but something in her mind – a kind of soft, gentle voice – kept nagging at her to look. She eventually managed to pull the door open, freeing it from all the overgrowth. Coughing slightly from disturbing a year's worth of dust, she walking in, staring at the large, intricate rug on the floor.

_It couldn't possibly be right_, she thought, _why would there be an expensive looking rug inside a shed that contained lawn mowers and other dirty gardening tools_? Getting to her knees, she took the corner of the rug and threw it away from her, revealing a large circular metal part in the floor. She gasped and jumped back onto her feet, backing into the wall behind her, her hands instantly grabbing her head as it erupted in a sharp, searing pain.

- O -

The Doctor sat in the front passenger seat in Sally's little corolla and suddenly yelled "Stop!"

Sally slammed on the brakes in the middle of the road, looking wildly in all directions, wondering what she had missed.

"Stay here," the Doctor instructed, getting out of the car and shutting the door.

"Where are you going?" Sally asked, getting out of the car too as the Doctor walked away from her back the way they had just come.

He didn't answer her.

"Should I just park here then?" she yelled after him, making Jack smirk. "Leave her in the middle of the road do you reckon?"

The Doctor continued to ignore Sally's angry yells and kept walking down the road. This new pain in his head was almost blinding him, and it was the psychic link with the TARDIS trying to re-establish itself with his mind. The TARDIS kept dropping in and out like a badly tuned radio, but from what he could gather, she wanted him to get to Bella's garden shed as fast as he could.

He was unsure of what this meant; was Bella in danger and had been taken down into the underground vault, or had Bella gone there on her own accord? Either way, his assumptions from earlier had now been confirmed; the TARDIS _had_ been trying to help Bella remember which was the reason why she was sounding so tired and over worked, something which relieved him slightly. At least he knew what was going on with one thing in his life.

As he rounded the corner, he stepped through a wild and overgrown gateway and came to a stop after seeing Bella step out of the shed that concealed the opening for her father's underground bunker, her expression thoughtful.

An idea came to him quiet suddenly, an idea that he wasn't entirely sure if it was his own or if it was the TARDIS's, but he strode forward none-the-less. He definitely hadn't thought the plan through; he just needed to give it a go. If Bella had already started to remember things on her own accord, maybe all she needed was something big to get her memories into gear again, and the Doctor knew just the thing. Of course, it could work in the opposite way as well; the memories and the shock of all her memories flooding back at once could be too much for Bella's mind (and the TARDIS) to cope with, therefore he could make the whole situation worse than it already was. It was a daft plan, especially for him, but that gave him the confidence that it would definitely work. She needed a shock, and he knew just the thing that would work.

"Bella," he called as he quickly approached her, his hearts racing as what he was about to do dawned on him.

A look of recognition spread across her face, her mouth opening and closing again before she shook her head. "John, what are you doing here?"

_So close_, he grimaced.

"I just have to try something," the Doctor explained quietly, Bella's eyes not leaving his. He stopped directly in front of her. "I'm sorry if this doesn't work, but I have to try, you need to know that I am doing everything that I can possibly think of to get you back."

"Get me back?" Bella repeated looking extremely confused. "Why is everyone talking about me in the past tense?"

"Bella," he said, moving forward a bit more to place his hands on her arms to quieten her. "You need to trust me."

"I – I _do_ trust you." She whispered sounding slightly frightened as though she didn't understand why she would trust him.

"I know you do, Bella Lumic." He said very softly, his hand on her cheek now and his mouth very close to hers. "And that is why I need you to remember."

He closed the distance between them, his lips coming into contact with hers as he kissed her perhaps a little more passionately than he had originally intended, but he supposed that just went to show how much he wanted his plan to work, and to his surprise, Bella didn't pull away.

Moments later however, the Doctor suddenly let go of her and took a few steps back, his hands flying up to his head as he gasped in pain. His psychic link with the TARDIS seemed to have fully re-established itself again and once the Doctor had realised this, his eyes flew open.

Bella stood perfectly still, her eyes closed and her skin deathly pale and he knew as soon as he saw her that he had failed, that instead of forcing her memories back to the surface, it seemed as though her brain had almost entirely shut down in order to protect itself.

"No," his whispered emotionally, realising that the TARDIS must have given up too. He'd lost her. He had let the Trickster win, and Bella was his prize, meaning that he was destined to travel alone for the rest of his potentially long life; two companions in a row that would never, ever, remember him.

He felt a tear fall down his cheek as he took another step backwards. She was gone; the girl who had stolen both his hearts and he couldn't do anything about it. He knew that he needed to leave her, he knew that since the TARDIS was no longer trying to defend Bella's mind from the Trickster that Bella was in great danger if she saw him. But he couldn't bring himself to do it; to leave her, not after everything that they had gone through together… she was his best friend…

"I'm so sorry Bella." He managed to choke out, his voice full of guilt and pain, turning and forcing himself to walk away, but as he did so he didn't hear a very soft, emotional whisper from Bella behind him.

"Doctor…"


	10. Ep1 The Sleeping Policeman CH10

_**Author's note: Okay, so it's a really long one this time; nearly five thousand words. I can hear all of your voices in my head saying things along the lines of "Good, that's the least we deserve after making us wait so long." Quite right, too.**_

_**Because I haven't been on here in so long, I'm not sure if I have responded to all of your reviews. If I didn't respond to yours, please let me know and I will go back and reply it for you. Time seemed to have escaped me the last few weeks. Well, months really. I am obsessive over all things except time management it would seem. You can also blame Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss. Oh Benedict Cumberbatch! Swoon!**_

_***Clears throat* **_

_**Sorry, I am trying to resist writing Sherlock fanfiction with every fibre of my body, and I can assure you that it is very hard to stay focused on Doctor Who. How amazing would it be if there was a Doctor Who/Sherlock crossover on tv? Oh my God, I would be an absolute mess -**_

_***Clears throat again***_

_**Sorry, I digress. I will stop acting as though I am blogging, and let you get on with reading...**_

_**Enjoy!**_

_**Oh, and I am assuming that there will be much Dylan-hate after this. Just saying.**_

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><p>The pain in Bella's head from the rush of all her memories flooding back to her slowly faded in time to hear the Doctor choke out "I'm so sorry, Bella." Her eyes flew open and she saw him walking away from her and she tried to reach out and move forward to grab him, to tell him that everything was okay again, that <em>she<em> was okay again, but she couldn't move.

"Doctor…" she managed to whisper, silent tears streaming down her face, but he didn't hear her as he became further and further away. Once he had gone out under the gateway and disappeared behind the tall hedge, she collapsed to her knees feeling overwhelmed by almost everything.

Bella remembered being stuck in the strange violet snow and the Trickster touching her forehead. She remembered the look on the Doctor's face and the fear in his voice. She shuddered at the thought. _How could she have possibly forgotten that day_, she thought to herself, but she supposed all her memories had been wiped when the Trickster had touched her.

Now that Bella could remember everything, her mind worked at tremendous speeds to try and piece everything together. She knew now that the TARDIS had been in her head, fighting so very hard to keep hold of her memories to make sure that she never _really_ forgot the Doctor, but it had been so much more than that; what the TARDIS had been doing was helping her to see all the clues, all the information that the Trickster would have hoped that no one would see. Bella didn't know why the TARDIS had done so much, but she was extremely thankful, and she wasn't sure how she could ever make it up to the TARDIS.

Moving quickly towards her tall horse, Bella picked up the reins before quickly running towards the house, her horse trotting after her. She knew that the Doctor and her friends were now in terrible danger and she had to do all that she could to keep them safe… she just hoped that there was still a jar of pickled eggs in her cupboard still.

- o -

The Doctor slowly got out of Sally's car, his expression that of devastation. He had once again lost a companion and now he himself felt very lost. The Trickster had beaten him; the Trickster had won. He gave a heavy sigh and leant on the car. He could feel Jack's eyes on him, but he didn't care; if he was honest with himself, he didn't care for much now. He didn't care for the beautiful patterns in the spider's webs that were covered in snow, or the way that the birds were chirping happily in the trees surrounding them; none of it mattered to him anymore and it felt as though time itself was meaningless to him.

Of course, he had felt like this many times before, he was just getting worse at hiding it in his old age, and some of the times had been much worse than others. He remembered leaving Sarah Jane behind when he had been summoned back to Gallifrey, and when Donna hadn't even noticed when he'd said goodbye to her, and then when he had left Rose Tyler – someone who he still cared about very much – behind on a parallel universe with the human version of himself. But this was different; he hadn't made the same mistakes with Bella as he had done with everyone else; he had sat her down and told her why he was alone, why people left him whether they chose to or not. He had told her that travelling with him was dangerous – that being with him was dangerous – that _he_ was dangerous and warned her that she could get hurt. He had promised her that he would always tell her the truth – or what he could actually bring himself to tell her, at least – he said that he would never lie to her, that he wouldn't lead her on or ever give her the wrong idea. Basically, he had treated Bella with the respect that all his former companions deserved, yet sometimes didn't receive.

_But none of that mattered now_, he thought painfully to himself. Bella was gone, and him staying there was putting her in grave danger, yet he knew in his hearts that he couldn't just leave her; he'd promised her he's never do that again. He would just have to stay there, watching her from the where the TARDIS stood for all eternity. It would be a lonely existence, but perhaps it was one that he deserved. Certainly, it was the only one he could trust himself with.

_So many lives ruined._

From the driver's side of the car, Sally watched the Doctor worriedly, seeing his devastated expression. Something had happened after he had gone off on his own, she could tell. He had refused to tell them what he had done when he had returned to them, but his face had said it all, specifically his eyes; Sally had never in all her life seen such emotion in anything before.

Sally glanced back to the house, where she found Dylan striding angrily towards them.

"Dylan, what's wrong?" Sally asked alarmed.

"He's what's wrong!" Dylan said angrily as he continued his furious approach, glancing at the Doctor who didn't flinch or look up. "He took her away and changed everything that was right the way that it was! She is the only person I can be myself around and she left me for him!"

"Dylan, how is this going to help the situation?" Sally asked feeling very strained. She just wanted her best friend back to the way she used to be, she didn't want all the fights that seemed to go along with getting her back.

"I think it will help it along nicely," Dylan continued, his voice filled with jealous anger as he watched the Doctor, willing him to bite back and fight. "Everything was fine till _he_ showed up on her doorstep a year ago all good-looks and charm, to take her away –"

"He saved her life, actually." Jack said hotly in the defence of the Doctor, who said nothing in retaliation.

"Were you there too then?" Dylan asked, rounding on Jack. "No, so how do you know that he hadn't been stalking her or something? It's not like she's the first one to go with him, she couldn't be, so where are all the other women who've gone with him? What happened to them?"

Sally noticed the Doctor tense slightly, his head jerking around to glare furiously at her brother.

"See, what I reckon is they all travel with you until they see how dangerous it is, how dangerous _you_ are." Dylan continued cruelly. "That's it isn't it, I'm right? How many others have lost their memories? How many lives have you destroyed? How many have died to protect you? Will you let her do that too; die bravely and all, because she's the kind of girl who would."

The two of them glared at each other furiously.

"You know what I think?" Dylan asked the Doctor quietly, and the Doctor raised an eyebrow in response. "I think you deserve it, Bella not remembering who you are, because I know how you feel about her, I'm not stupid –"

"Could have fooled me," Jack muttered darkly.

"- it just means that you'll spend the rest of your life know that she can no longer love you back." Dylan said spitefully, ignoring Jack's interruption.

"Dylan!" gasped Sally, not able to believe what had just come out of her brother's mouth.

"Don't listen to him Doctor; he's just a jealous boy who could never get what he wanted." Jack said sounding suddenly as furious as Dylan, but the Doctor hardly noticed; Dylan's words hit him like a wave of icy water, leaving him frozen in place.

Dylan made a move to lunge himself at Jack, who stood leering at him as if daring him to take a swing at him, but Sally quickly grabbed him.

"Don't be stupid!" Sally said angrily. "You need to pull your head in Dylan. Bella has never shown the remotest amount of interest in you – _ever_! She is happy with him, happier than she's ever really been here with us."

"How can you say that?" Dylan asked outraged as he rounded on his sister now.

"Because I care about her," Sally said, beginning to sound upset. "I just want her to be happy and if you _really_ felt about her the way you say you do, then you would want her to be happy too."

Dylan opened and closed his mouth a few times, obviously thinking very hard about what Sally had said.

"He's the only one who can help her, Dylan." Sally whispered.

Dylan remained silent for a few moments before finally looking up to the Doctor.

"Milton is here, do any of you want to tell me why?" Dylan said.

"Here?" the Doctor repeated hurriedly, moving towards him. "When did he get here?"

"I am assuming that it's bad then?" Dylan asked dully.

"Answer the question!" the Doctor snapped.

"He said that he heard that Bella was sick, that she wasn't well." Dylan explained, guessing that Milton had something do to with Bella's memory. "He asked where she was, but I didn't tell him, I knew something was off."

"Good," the Doctor said, sounding both relieved and thankful. "You might have just saved Bella's life."

Dylan nodded. "I thought as much."

"How did he react when you told him that she wasn't here?" the Doctor enquired.

"Surprised mostly," Dylan shrugged indifferently.

"But where _is_ Bella?" Sally asked worriedly.

"At her house," answered the Doctor and Dylan at the same time, both of them gazing suspiciously at one another as Jack and Sally looked at them surprised.

"And you didn't think that we should stop there on our way home?" Sally asked hotly, her hands on her hips.

"I think the Doctor _did_ stop there on the way home." Jack said, observing the Doctor's somewhat guilty expression.

"Why couldn't we have gone too?" she ordered angrily. "You aren't the only one here who cares about her, you know!"

"The TARDIS told me to go there alone." The Doctor said quickly. "She was on the verge of remembering, I could see it in her eyes. The TARDIS had been helping her to keep hold of her memories – keeping them locked into her subconsciousness. Because of what happened last night, Bella must have been drawn to her own home where the things that she's been dreaming about were slowly being proven real."

"Why did the TARDIS want you there?" Jack asked slowly.

"She thought I could help Bella remember fully." The Doctor answered quietly.

"And did you?" Dylan asked, with a mix of dread and hope in his voice.

"No,"

A few tense and upset moments followed before a new voice spoke, sounding genuinely relieved.

"Well, that's a relief then," said Edwin Milton as he stepped out the front door, all of them turning to face him. "I guess I won't have to kill you now."

The Doctor pulled Sally behind him as he moved to stand side-by-side with Jack and Dylan, glaring furiously at Milton.

"Although," Milton added in an afterthought. "The Trickster doesn't like you overly much."

"What is your overall plan for Bella?" the Doctor ordered dangerously. "Why can she still not remember?"

Milton hesitated, obviously unsure of what to say.

"Tell me!" the Doctor yelled.

"It's the Trickster Doctor," Milton said very quietly. "He doesn't tell anyone his full plan, not even those he is using to craft the progression of time, he only tells us what he wants us to hear. From what I can put together though, is that he appeared at some weak point in time space and stole Bella's memories, then somehow brought her back here."

"And you had no idea, of course?" the Doctor scoffed. "You thought him saving you was just a nice gesture?"

Milton looked down guiltily. "I regret my decision to help him, Doctor, for I took life for granted. I suppose it is true that you only appreciate life when you lay dying on a muddy battlefield, surrounded by your friends and enemies alike."

"A muddy battlefield?" repeated Sally sounding confused.

The Doctor frowned. "You aren't the real Edwin Milton, are you?"

Milton shook his head. "As I lay dying he came to me, offering me a new peaceful life four years in the past."

"What did he tell you?" the Doctor asked, getting the feeling that Milton – or whoever he really was – was trying to help them.

"Of the situation concerning yourself and Bella, nothing." said Milton quietly. "He had only said that if I lived and took the place of the human Edwin Milton and kept a watchful eye over a girl, a girl who remained nameless until the deal was done, I would escape death and save the universe. Had he of told me who it was that I would be keeping an eye on at the time I would not have accepted the deal."

"Why not?" asked Jack suspiciously.

"Well, Bella Lumic is known throughout the entire universe, Captain Harkness, for her constant struggle to save this planet and her loyalty towards others."

"It would seem that species has a somewhat broader range than I was expecting, but go on," the Doctor said, receiving shocked looks from Sally and Dylan.

Milton gave a slight nod before continuing. "If I had of known that Bella was involved, I would have rather died, for I know that she can be equally as terrifying as you Doctor, when her friends or her planet is in danger. I must admit that I am rather frightened of her. Besides, her place is at your side, Doctor, nowhere else."

"You're frightened of Bella?" Dylan said doubtfully.

"When she is really angry, frightened, upset or she knows that someone she cares about is in danger, she is truly a force to be reckoned with." Milton told him seriously.

"I highly doubt that," Dylan scoffed, making Milton frown.

"I've seen her destroy an entire alien race, plus their re-creator in order to save this planet and the entire universe." The Doctor said quietly to Dylan as Sally leant in closer to listen unbelievingly. "I have seen her aim a gun at a ghost-like being in order to protect the people and the things that she cares very much about and I have seen grown men cower before her in fear because of what she has done in the past. Don't doubt her."

"She could never do those things!" Dylan gaped, horrified by the Doctor's words. "What have you done to her? You have changed her so much!"

"It wasn't the Doctor's fault," Milton said. "Everybody makes their own choices in life."

"You're defending what she has done?" Jack asked sceptically, raising his eyebrows.

"Don't you?" Milton asked surprised. "What she has done in the past is nothing to what she will do to save her beloved Time Lord's life."

"How could you possibly know that?" Dylan asked as the Doctor's stomach churned uncomfortably with fear.

"I am from four years in the future, remember?"

"And we don't want to know any more about that." the Doctor said quickly, still quite afraid of the meaning behind his words. "Spoilers, as a friend of mine would say. Well, at least I _think_ she's a friend, I'm not entirely sure yet…"

"Wait a minute," Sally said suddenly. "If you know about Bella's future, wouldn't that mean that Bella gets her memory back and continues travelling with the Doctor?"

The Doctor smiled slightly, thinking that Sally had somehow gotten her head around the time factor rather quickly for a human.

"Apparently time can be re-written," Milton said sadly.

"No," the Doctor said sternly. "Not with Bella, I need her!"

"I know you do, Doctor, which is why I am sorry." Milton said and the Doctor actually believed him. "You don't yet realise how much she means to you, how much your life depends on her. Had I have known that it was you two involved, I would have never agreed; the universe needs you both too much.

"Then help us!" the Doctor pleaded, hoping against all odds that he would agree.

"I can't. You can't just go back on your word with the Trickster, I have no choice!"

"You always have a choice, Milton, even you said that!" The Doctor said. "Just decide that you no longer want to help the Trickster and everything will go back to the way it was."

Milton seemed to consider this and they all held their breaths.

"But then I'll die."

"You're from the future, Milton, and you obviously know things that Bella goes onto do," the Doctor said, still pleading and trying to keep calm. "Do it for her, I know that you don't hate her, maybe you've even grown to care about her – Rassilon knows that stranger things have happened – but please help her!"

Milton slowly shook his head. "I'm sorry Doctor, but I can't… I don't want to die."

"Well, you're going to die either way, so choose which death you would prefer." Jack said suddenly and the Doctor looked back to him to discover him hold out his gun.

"Jack!" the Doctor said through gritted teeth as Sally and Dylan moved back wearily. "Put that away!"

"Doctor, we can't risk something like this," Jack said. "Bella needs you as much as you need her."

"I know, but this is not the way to go about it, though!" the Doctor yelled furiously.

"It's the way of UNIT," Milton said, watching Jack carefully with wide eyes.

"I'm Torchwood." said Jack angrily.

"Ah, I should have guessed," Milton nodded. "You lot blew up that Sycorax ship that was _leaving_. Brave."

"Wrong Torchwood." said Jack, his voice shaking slightly.

"Shut up a minute, will you?" Sally suddenly said from behind the Doctor and everyone looked to her frowning, confused by her sudden rudeness. "Can you hear that?"

The Doctor strained his ears to hear the sound of hoof beats getting closer and closer before seconds later Bella, who sat atop her massive horse, seemingly appeared out of nowhere through the trees and skidded to a stop between the Doctor, who had pulled both Dylan and Jack backwards out of the way, and Milton, who recoiled a few steps.

"Bella," the Doctor whispered as her horse reared powerfully, Bella facing away from him.

"Don't even think about coming any closer!" Bella said furiously as her horse pawed the ground nervously, flicking up snow and rocks from the ground as he did so.

"Bella," Milton began, his voice shaking slightly. "Bella, this man is not who you might think, he's a villain – the bad guy – he's wanted all over England!"

"Liar," Bella said darkly and Sally couldn't believe the tone of her voice; it was so different to what she was used to.

"What has come over you Bella?" Milton asked, obviously quite alarmed now. "We're good friends!"

"No, I used to be friends with the _real_ Edwin Milton, not you!" Bella said heatedly. "You know, that man that you killed on the Trickster's orders?"

Milton stared open-mouthed at Bella, as did everyone else, especially the Doctor.

"That's impossible," Milton gasped.

"Not impossible, just highly improbable," Bella said coldly. "But I didn't do it on my own; I had help from the TARDIS, all I needed was a little extra push, thank you Doctor!"

"Can that even work?" Milton said, glancing around Bella's horse to the Doctor, who had a bit more colour in his cheeks than both Bella and Jack were used to seeing.

"What did you do?" Jack asked the Doctor curiously.

"It worked?" the Doctor managed to ask after a long period of opening and closing his mouth.

Bella looked around, giving him a flash of her brilliant, yet somewhat bashful, smile. "As if I couldn't remember something as intimate as a kiss like that one, Doctor, considering it's a rare occurrence for us!"

"She's back!" Jack laughed happily, as the Doctor grinned sheepishly, Sally stifled her laughed and even Dylan gave a small, relieved sigh.

"But fat lot of good you were," she said, "you gave up on me!"

The Doctor's grin slid from his face, but once Bella saw this she gave him a wink.

"Nah, you didn't give up on me, you just jumped to the wrong conclusion again." She continued softly and the Doctor knew at once that she didn't blame him for any of it. "But, if you had of waited a few seconds more – which, by the way, give me some credit, I did just have the TARDIS in my head for a solid week struggling to keep hold of everything. It was quite exhausting to have _all_ my memories rush back at once, you know!"

"And what would have happened if lover-boy here had of waited?" Jack asked still looking very amused as he chuckled.

"Well, I could have warned you, couldn't I?" Bella said, her light tones beginning to have darker ones underlying them.

"Warned us about what?" the Doctor asked sharply.

"Warned you about the monster standing before us" Bella said coldly, looking back to Milton, who recoiled even more.

"I – I don't know what you mean, Bella?" Milton stammered a frightened look on his face now.

"No?" asked Bella. "You know, it was rather foolish of the Trickster to get someone like you to keep an ever-watchful eye on me, considering all my experience with your lot. It was very lucky that _you_ didn't bring my memory back on your own with all the little things, the signs which pointed to who – to what you really are. I mean, come on, all the time we spent together?"

The Doctor watched Milton suspiciously, his mind working at a hundred miles an hour, trying to catch up to his companion who obviously had seven days' worth of information tucked away in her mind more than him. He had gathered for a long while now that this man was not the real Edwin Milton, and he had only discovered a mere ten minutes ago that he was from the future and probably _not_ human, yet Bella seemed to have already worked it all out.

"How -?" gasped Milton staring at her in a state of horror.

"Well, a very good friend once told me that I had a pretty good mind," Bella said shrugging as if that point wasn't overly important. "I guess good observational skills are a part of that too. But you know what else I have noticed?"

Milton shook his head.

"That you've got a rubbish sense of smell when you're in your human form." Bella said indifferently as she pulled a medium sized jar from her big pockets.

"What's that?" Milton asked fearfully, jumping backwards as Sally and Dylan sniggered, not quite understanding why a grown man would fear a glass jar.

"Pickled eggs?" the Doctor said quietly, his face crumpled in confusion before letting an "ah," noise escape softly from his mouth.

"Pickled eggs," Bella confirmed, raising the jar ever-so-slightly, making it look as though she could throw it at any time. "More specifically, a jar of pickled eggs that is out of date by –"she glanced quickly at the label on the jar. "- over a year now, so I'd assume they'd be saturated in acetic acid by now. I have also got some watermelon." She added, dropping the reins onto her horse neck and pulled out another container with a blue lid that contained a lot of murky brown liquid. "Only, it doesn't look much like watermelon anymore, but that's what happens when you don't go home regularly to clean out your fridge." She added in an afterthought.

"Bella," the Doctor said warningly, moving a few steps forward.

She slowly put the liquidised watermelon back in her pocket. "It's okay, Doctor, I'm not going to use it unless he gives me no other choice. I won't even use it for revenge – even though I _think_ I am entitled to it, considering… no, he just needs to run along and tell the Trickster that I would like a quick word."

"You – you want to _talk_ to him?" Milton asked incredulously.

"Yes I do." said Bella bluntly. "I don't appreciate my life being changed and altered, nor do I approve of someone stealing my memories."

"But he can't appear here –"

"I would rather appreciate if you would stop lying to me," Bella said curtly, clearly not amused in the slightest now, and Sally had to admit that she could have sort of understand why Milton was slowly taking small steps backwards now. "I saw you talking to the mirror in your kitchen."

Milton slowly nodded. "I will try… I am sure he knows about all this anyway."

"Go," Bella said with a great deal of authority in her voice that none of them was really expecting.

Milton nodded, giving Bella the slightest of bows before running awkwardly down the driveway before diverting suddenly into the bushes with a loud crashing.

Sally looked up to Bella, who still sat up on her horse watching Milton disappear fully from view, her expression unreadable.

"You can't just let him go!" Dylan protested suddenly, moving forward. "He helped steal your memories, didn't he? Aren't you going to hand him over to someone or something?"

"He has no choice but to find the Trickster, he has failed in his little protection mission. "Bella said slowly. "Besides, it isn't me that he has to worry about now."

Sally looked up at her best friend's face as a dark shadow briefly passed across it. It made Bella seem so much older than she actually was and Sally wondered what she had been through over the last year, she wondered what adventures she had written in that journal of hers. She watched as Bella swung down off her horse and looked to the Doctor, her dark expression vanishing as she grinned at him.

Both the Doctor and Bella moved towards each other quickly, the Doctor wrapping his arms around her tightly and picked her up off the ground.

"Ooh, I missed you!" He said happily as Bella grinned even more.

"I missed you too Doctor," she said quietly before the Doctor put her back down, beaming at her and as she took off her black riding helmet Sally collided with her.

"We have been so worried about you!" Sally said, hugging Bella. "I mean, you turn up here, all Luna Lovegood-like, with no idea what was going on half the time and I didn't know what to do!"

Jack smiled and patted Bella on the back once she had managed to free herself Sally's tight hold.

"It wasn't quite the same without you," he said fondly and Bella smiled and gave his hand a quick, tight squeeze before her eyes turned across to Dylan, who seemed to be keeping his distance.

"And you," she said sounding angry as she moved towards him.

"Yes?" he asked innocently before she slapped him across his cheek. "Ouch!" he gasped as he stumbled backwards slightly.

"Just remember that if you _ever_ do what you did to me earlier today again, you will come out of it a lot worse than this!" she said furiously before she hugged him tightly.

Dylan felt – and looked – shocked for a few moments before he hugged Bella back, burying his face in her shoulder, feeling increasingly guilty about what he had said to her.

"I'm so sorry," he whispered.

"I know," Bella whispered softly back so the others couldn't hear her; this just needed to be heard by Dylan. "And so am I."

He pulled away from and looked at her with another confused frown and Bella opened her mouth to explain but a loud smashing noise sounded somewhere within earshot.

"That sounded like glass," Jack said quickly.

"There's a mirror in the stables," Bella gasped, looking quickly back to the Doctor.

Nobody moved for a few moments, not until Bella shoved her riding helmet into Dylan's hands and began sprinting down towards the stables.

"But pickled eggs?" the Doctor yelled after her and they all heard her laugh loudly in answer. The Doctor gave a "Ha!" in response before sprinting after her, leaving Sally and Dylan looking expectantly to Jack.

"Everything is back to normal now." Jack said seriously.

"How do you know?" Sally asked.

"Because we've started running again!" grinned Jack as he too ran after them. "Come on!" he yelled back to them and they both exchanged a glance before following too.


	11. Ep1 The Sleeping Policeman CH11

_**Author's note: I am so sorry everyone, I thought I had posted this chapter months ago! I didn't realise that it wasn't on here. You probably all hate me now! I don't blame you! Sorry, sorry, sorry! Here you go, I will let you read the final chapter and I will talk more at the end!**_

* * *

><p>Bella could hear the Doctor running somewhere behind her and she felt happier than she had done in days. They were back together, just like they should be, just like they were meant to be. She ran around the outside of the stables and through the doorway where she slid to a stop on the hay-covered stone floor. Seconds later the Doctor ran into her and he quickly grabbed her so she didn't fly forwards as they both looked at the scene before them.<p>

The breezeway was covered in hay and the mirror at the opposite end had been smashed. The three horses poked their heads out of their stables to gaze, ears forward, down to the corner on their right.

"Tack room," Bella whispered to the Doctor as Jack, Sally and Dylan ran in behind them.

"Looks like someone has had a bit of a tantrum," the Doctor said loudly.

"You don't know anything about it!" said a strange sounding voice that seemed to crack from the end of the room.

"Is that the Trickster?" Sally whispered fearfully.

"It sounds like Milton," Dylan said quietly. "Maybe him and the Trickster are actually one and the same?" he pondered and everyone turned to look at him doubtfully. "What?" he asked.

"You have been watching too much _Coronation Street_," the Doctor said, frowning.

"It sounds more like _East-enders_ to me!" said the cackling voice and everyone turned to see a tall, bright green alien with a long, slim neck, huge claws and big, black eyes standing facing them.

Sally let out a small yelp and jumped backwards into Jack and Dylan stared unbelievingly with wide eyes and he managed to whisper "Blimey!"

"What happened?" Bella asked the tall, foreboding Slitheen after recovering from the small, frightened step she had taken backwards. Even though she had known what _Milton_ really had been the whole time, it still hadn't prepared her for seeing a fully grown Slitheen in her best-friend's stables, not after her last encounter with the Family on Nealon.

"I failed, didn't I?" Milton snapped at her.

"Why did you smash the mirror?" she pressed.

Milton hesitated. "The Trickster broke my compression field."

"Serves you right," Jack said lightly.

"Jack," Bella reprimanded. "What is your name?" she continued in softer tones.

"My name?" he asked sounding slightly surprised.

Bella nodded.

"My name is Glog Fel Fotch Happen-Bar Slitheen," he said slowly.

"And did you destroy the interior of my home?" Bella asked somewhat coolly.

"No," he said shaking his head, and Bella was inclined to believe him. "That wasn't me, someone else must have broken in."

Bella exchanged a quick glance with the Doctor.

"Right," the Doctor said. "Now that we've established that you are a member of the Slitheen family and break and enter isn't your style, perhaps you could tell us how you became wound up in this in the first place."

"Why?" Glog snapped, glaring at the Doctor.

"Because I would like to know." Said Bella quietly and Glog's harsh expression suddenly changed. "It was on Nealon, wasn't it?"

The Doctor and Jack looked sharply to her as Glog nodded sadly.

"He's from four years in the future and he's a Slitheen," Bella told them quietly. "It wasn't hard to put two and two together."

"I lay in the mud in the middle of the battlefield on Nealon," Glog told them quietly. "I had managed to escape the vinegar that the Nealonians had managed to cover everything in, but I had still been critically injured. The rain had stopped by this stage, and you and the Doctor had already vanished in your blue box, and I just stared up at the clearing sky to see the stars above me. There were so many dead around me; my enemies, my allies… we knew their secret and they knew ours."

"I'm sorry." Bella whispered emotionally and the Doctor quickly took her hand.

Glog waved his claw dismissively. "I felt the lines that divided us and the Nealonians, the lines between us and the enemy had already begun to blur before that moment anyway, and I wondered if our five year assault could be justified. I wondered if John Lumic had been truthful to us; had the Nealonians really been plotting against us."

Bella bowed her head, feeling sick as Sally and Dylan exchanged bewildered glances.

"It felt like hours passed as I lay dying and I wept. I didn't want to die; I hadn't even wanted to go there in the first place! I'm not like the others in my family; I've never been like them really. I am more a man of science than anything else and I've never understood the Slitheen way or their bloodlust. I was only there because my own father had forced me to go…

"Eventually the Trickster appeared and gave me the chance to live a new, simple life at an apparently small price, but it wasn't. He didn't tell me what the cost would be –"

"Did you really think there wouldn't be repercussions, _Glog_?" said a new voice from the small mirror beside Bella, who jumped sideways, taken completely by surprise as she realised the Trickster's ugly, terrifying face filled the entire mirror.

"Hello Bella," the Trickster smiled baring his mouthful of razor sharp teeth.

Bella suddenly fell backwards into the Doctor, her eyes rolling into the back of her head, her body completely limp. The Doctor held her as he sunk to the ground, the others all crowding around them.

"Good to see that I obviously still have _some_ power over her mind. "The Trickster said somewhat happily as the Doctor glared up at him.

"What have you done now?" he asked furiously.

The Trickster's smile widened. "Oh Doctor." He smiled, laughing with an eerie smugness that made them all uncomfortable. "Surely you didn't think that it would as easy as your faithful TARDIS staying in her head, holding tightly onto all those apparently precious memories, helping her to slowly remember did you?"

The Doctor remained silent, looking back down to Bella's pale face.

"I think you forget how I work," the Trickster continued, his amused tone disappearing. "Perhaps you should go and ask Ms Smith –"

"Don't you dare do anything to her!" the Doctor yelled, his hearts beating very fast.

"She won't see it coming this time, none of them will." The Trickster told him slowly, obviously enjoying the distress he was causing them all. "It will be such a happy day for Sarah Jane, a day that every little girl dreams of –"

"I will stop you!" the Doctor stated boldly.

"Stop me?" the Trickster repeated, laughing cruelly. "How can you possibly stop in unstoppable? As you hold Bella in your arms her mind is reverting itself back to what it was like before she ever met you and you cannot stop it."

"But why Bella?" asked Dylan suddenly and the Trickster looked to him.

"Has the Doctor not told you that they travel throughout time and space saving planet after planet from all the many wrong do-ers in the universe, or did you simply not believe him?" he asked Dylan who looked guiltily down to the Doctor. "It is rather annoying in reality. I do believe that things would be much more interesting if the Doctor was left on his own."

"Why?" asked Sally tentatively.

"Would you like to answer that Doctor, or shall I?" the Trickster sneered, and the Doctor just stared at him furiously. "Very well, I will then. I don't know if you have noticed, but the Doctor is a very dangerous man to be around. He calls himself _Doctor_, but I think he is more of a destroyer than a healer personally. Sometimes he goes too far… oh; you should have seen him in Pompeii, such a magnificent display of destruction! That is what Bella is for; to stop him. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't and sometimes – more often than not, really – his companions become his weapons and Bella is certainly no exception. Why don't you tell them what Bella did on the planet Keyna, Doctor, tell her friends what _she_ sacrificed, what _she_ destroyed –"

"Stop it!" the Doctor said dangerously.

"I wonder how many others have travelled with the Doctor only to become like the very monsters they fight. Twenty, maybe even thirty? School teachers, students, military men, shop assistants all becoming the Doctor's private army."

"You need to stop this," the Doctor said. "Please let Bella go, put me in her place if you want, just let her go!"

"What, and miss out on all this angst, I don't think so!" the Trickster laughed. "Can't you see that this is a good thing? Sure, without Bella you will probably die within the next year – prepare for the deadly four knocks – but I am giving her what you cannot; a proper life. Just think a proper human husband that she could grow old with."

"But she can't!" the Doctor said and everyone, Jack included, wondered if that was because he loved her too much to accept this theory. "Have you forgotten that Bella doesn't age like normal humans do? Even if she did want to marry Dylan she would outlive him, just like she would outlive everyone she has ever known, she is just as cursed as I am!"

Jack placed a supportive (and very understanding) hand on the Doctor's shoulder as Sally and Dylan exchanged yet another confused glance.

"Please," the Doctor continued quietly. "Just let Bella go."

"I don't think so," the Trickster smiled.

There were a few moments of tense silence before Bella began to stir in the Doctor's arms where she slowly opened her eyes to look up to the Doctor's scared face.

"I passed out again, didn't I?" she said, sounding somewhat annoyed with herself.

"Impossible!" the Trickster gasped as Bella sat up, glaring up at him. "You can't remember, you just can't!"

"I think you have made them suffer enough, Trickster," said the Slitheen's strange voice.

"You traitor!" the Trickster hissed, turning to look at Glog, who was leaning against the wall behind him. "You fool, would you really die to save this half-human _thing_?"

"He's calling me a _thing_?" Bella said hotly.

Yes," Glog said faintly as if Bella had never interrupted.

"So be it." The Trickster snarled.

"Glog," Bella started, getting to her feet as Glog began to slide slowly down the wall. "You don't have to do this, we can find another way –"

"There is no other way child!" the Trickster said with a strange kind of smile on his face. "He will slowly die, Lumic, and this time it's on your head!"

"It is not!" she said defensively glaring. "If you hadn't gotten involved, trying to alter the future, none of this would be happening!"

"Don't you see? He was already dying."

Bella knelt beside the huge Slitheen, putting a hand on his thick, green claw. "I am so sorry," she said, her voice breaking with emotion and guilt. The big, green beast looked at her with the softest expression a Slitheen could make.

"I can't blame you," Glog said quietly, making Bella look away from him tearfully.

The trickster gave a low, cruel laugh and everyone looked to him. "The same murderous blood runs through her veins, passed _lovingly_ down from father to daughter –"

"Not true!" said Jack furiously as the Doctor stood back up.

"Really?" the Trickster asked condescendingly. "If my memories serve me correctly, John Lumic changed after his wife died. Are you telling me that young Bella here would remain unchanged if anything should ever happen to you, Doctor?"

The Doctor glanced down to his companion, who held tightly onto Glog's arm and she couldn't bring herself to look up to him.

"Would she, if she knew that your death was to come, not do anything within her power to stop it, even if it meant destroying everything in her path?"

Bella's eyes met briefly and guiltily with the Doctor's.

"You are both so alike, Doctor." The Trickster said in a low, dangerous tone. "Yet we don't have to wait too long, I'm afraid for this to be proven. My only regret is that I have nothing to do with it."

"Nothing to do with what?" asked Bella suspiciously.

"The Death of the Doctor." The Trickster smiled.

"That will never happen!" Bella said with sheer determination, despite the quiver of fear in her voice.

The Trickster's smile widened. "Remember four knocks." He said and he disappeared, leaving everyone standing contemplating his last words.

Bella turned to the Doctor, looking absolutely horrified. They looked to each other for a few moments, so many unspoken things passing between them. He reached out to take her hand, but Glog suddenly gave a pain-filled cry. Both the Doctor and Bella rushed to his side as he looked up to him fearfully.

"I do not expect your kindness," he gasped as Bella knelt down beside him, taking his claw in her hands. "Not after what I've done and what the family did to your kind."

"Tough, you're getting it." Bella said, giving him a small smile before adding, "Besides, that wasn't your fault either. John Lumic used you… the Nealonians had never heard of you before, just as I am assuming that you'd never heard of them. He only wanted to get back at them. None of us ever stood a chance, I'm sorry!"

"I don't blame you," Glog his breath becoming shallow. ""There is nothing you can do for me now, Bella. I am dying, I always have been. Doctor," he gasped, looking now to him instead. "He is planning something else, the Trickster, with your friend…"

"I will be keeping an eye on her." The Doctor assured him.

Glog nodded slowly, closing his eyes. "Thank you," he whispered.

"No, thank you, Glog Fel Fotch Happen-Bar Slitheen," the Doctor said gently, reaching over the Slitheen's suddenly lifeless body to place his hand on Bella's shoulder.

"Is he dead?" Sally whispered with wide eyes and Bella looked down emotionally, still not letting go of Glog's claw.

"Yes," the Doctor said sadly.

"Can we take him home?" Bella asked quietly.

"Of course," the Doctor answered her and she nodded.

- O -

Once the Doctor and Jack had placed the Slitheen's body inside the TARDIS, they watched Bella with Sally and Dylan about a metre away from the TARDIS doors.

"There is nothing that I can say to make you stay, is there?" Dylan asked Bella slowly.

"I'm sorry, Dylan." Bella said truthfully.

He nodded, looking away from her. Eventually he gave a sigh. "Well, from what I've seen, the Doctor needs you. He was bloody useless without you."

Bella gave a laugh and glanced back to the Doctor, who gave an "Oi!" of protest but ended up shrugging the comment off in acceptance.

"Thank you," she said quietly.

"Welcome," Dylan answered her. "Just don't leave it so long next time, okay? We worry about you."

"Deal," Bella smiled. "I'm sure the Doctor wouldn't mind some extra company –"

"Uh, thanks, but no thanks." Dylan said hastily. "I don't think I am quite made out for the whole time-and-space-travel-thing."

Bella laughed again.

"One question though," he asked and she raised her eyebrows. "That Slitheen-thing and the Trickster… they gave me the impression that you were sort of… well – you know, like them."

"I am," Bella said, blushing slightly. "My mum was an alien apparently; half and half."

"Okay." Dylan said with a grin. "I should have known…"

"Bye, Dylan!" she laughed as she gave him a hug before turning to Sally. "Oh Sally…" she sighed as she saw tears in her best friend's eyes.

"I don't want you to go again," she said. "We have so much to catch up on, and you need to explain so much, it's not even funny! Who knows when I will see you again; you could be gone for a whole year before you come back."

"Sally," Bella started. "As soon as I leave, the TARDIS can be right on that same spot again ten seconds later, but for me three years could have gone by… time seems so strange and different once you stand in that ship. I promise I will come back."

"Or you could just come with us now," the Doctor said, moving to Bella's side and they both looked to him surprised. "I hear that you aren't entirely convinced about the existence of aliens and I would like to prove a point."

Bella looked from the Doctor's twinkling eyes to her best friend's startled expression.

"Come with you?" she asked and the Doctor nodded enthusiastically. "Really?"

"Yes!" the Doctor laughed.

Sally grinned excitedly before she gave a small frown. "It isn't going to be all _Star Trek_ is it?"

The Doctor groaned painfully before, laughing, Bella told her to go and pack her pyjamas before the Doctor had the chance to change his mind. Dylan looked to the Doctor seriously.

"You better look after both of them." He said sternly. "And she has got to be back before next Monday because we've got to help dad with the sheep."

"I will have her back just after we leave." The Doctor said seriously in answer.

"I think I misjudged you," Dylan said holding out his hand and the Doctor shook it with a smile. "Well, see you later, Bell, I better tell Sally to get a move on, otherwise you'll be waiting all afternoon."

He gave them a wave and headed slowly back into their house and the Doctor and Bella turned to Jack.

"Are you coming with us?" the Doctor asked him.

"As much as I would love to see all of Sally's reactions, I need to get back to Cardiff." Jack said with a laugh.

"Aww, but we always enjoying having you on the TARDIS," Bella smiled.

He gave her his usual cheeky grin before pulling her into a rough hug. "Try and stay out of trouble," he said, taking a long look at Bella and the Doctor, and Bella wondered if it had anything to do with the Trickster's ominous words before he too walked towards the house to say goodbye to his two new friends.

The Doctor and Bella looked to each other and smiled; finally they were together again.

"You okay?" he asked her quietly with a smile.

"Yeah," she nodded, "You?"

"Yeah," he answered, taking her arm in his as they began to walk slowly towards the TARDIS.

"Doctor, about what the Trickster said –"

"Let's not, hey?" he asked quietly, looking down to her.

"Yeah," Bella nodded and they fell into a worried silence.

"Now, I don't know what you've done – or rather – what you will do to make the TARDIS want to save you all the time, but it's obviously a doozey!" the Doctor said lightly with a proud smile.

"Maybe she just likes me!" Bella laughed at him.

"I have no doubt that she does," the Doctor laughed with her.

"Hey, wait for me!" they both heard Sally yell and Bella glanced over her shoulder.

"She'll look shocked, back out the doors and gasp '_it's bigger on the inside_.'" The Doctor said quietly to Bella as he unlocked the door for them.

"No way," Bella smiled. "There is no way that she'll go for something that predictable."

"Oh, you'd be surprised." The Doctor laughed as he entered through the doors.

Dylan watched his sister run into the blue police box with Captain Jack Harkness standing beside him, before she ran back out again, yelling "It's bigger on the inside!" to be met with laughed from inside the box. Jack gave a chuckle beside him and Sally ran back into the police box, shutting the doors behind her.

There was suddenly a strange noise and a strong wind blew from nowhere as the blue box suddenly began to disappear right before their very eyes, and Dylan wondered how long it would take for his sister and her best friend to come home again and what adventures they would be able to tell him about…

* * *

><p><em><strong>Again, I am super sorry about how long it's been. I've been back at uni, so my poor fan fiction has definately suffered. I hope this has made up for it. Too all of you who left comments on the last chapter, thank you, I am not sure who I replied to or not, just let me know if I missed you and I will go back and reply for you. I have been spending my very little spare time working on something new that has nothing to do with Doctor Who, which I hope to have up on here within the next few months. I feel that is a bit more mature for me. Hopefully you'll enjoy :D<strong>_

_**Now, let me give you a bit of a peak at the series to come. There will be some robots, a Roman holiday, maybe an Australian holiday, an old, decaying ship wreck, another trip to WWII and some new information about Bella's race, the Nealonians. There will be loads more, but that is just the stuff that I have planned out so far. Thirteen episodes all up and the next one witll be called... *drum roll* The Cannibal Machine. Woo. Not sure when they will be up, I don't want to rush them, plus it seems that I can't write Doctor Who fan fiction at the same time as the other fan fiction that I am working on. All the characters feel like they begin to blur and I don't like that one bit!**_

_**Sorry again for how long this has taken!**_


	12. Ep1 The Cannibal Machine CH1

_**Author's Note: I am so sorry for taking so long to post this new episode, I have moved house and I don't have the internet yet. Anyway, here it is; the second episode of the new series. What can I say, Sally has joined the team and it is going to go well. Well, as well as you can really go in the TARDIS, I suppose... Anyway, enjoy!**_

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><p><strong>Episode Two: The Cannibal Machine<strong>

Sally Brenner stared around the centre console room of the Doctor's strange blue box in a mix of fear and adoration. The Doctor and Bella looked on with amused faces as Sally took small, slow steps towards them, her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open slightly.

"Well," Bella asked with a grin.

"This is incredible," Sally managed to say eventually, earning a warm smile from the Doctor. "I mean, it's completely and utterly barking mad," she added before turning to look at the Doctor and her best friend.

"But still brilliant," Bella finished and Sally smiled at her somewhat sheepishly.

"Yeah," Sally admitted.

"So," the Doctor said as he clapped his hands then rubbed them together enthusiastically. "Now, I know I said I was going to show you aliens, but Bella and I were in the middle of some fantastic adventures before we were rudely interrupted –"

"We were basically holidaying," Bella told Sally with a small smile.

"No, no we weren't," the Doctor said looking down to Bella beside him, sounding slightly hurt – almost as if he were offended by what she had said. "We were professionally adventuring remember? Anyway," he continued, now in his usual, happy tones. "Bella, I do believe I promised you giant sea turtles, Fiji and the year 2150."

Sally watched as Bella's face lit up with excitement.

"I hope you packed your swimming costume," the Doctor added lightly to Sally who nodded enthusiastically.

"Come on," Bella said as she bounded over to Sally to take her heavy bag that she'd forgotten about from her. "I'll take you down to my room so we can get changed."

"Your room?" asked Sally with a frown. "You mean there is _more_ to this box than this room too?"

The gentle hum that the TARDIS always emanated suddenly changed for the slightest moment into a much darker – if not angry – tone.

"Her name is the TARDIS, Sally," Bella reminded her, also hearing the slight change in the TARDIS at Sally's comment. "Calling her a _box_ is a bit rude, she does have feelings you know."

Bella pulled on Sally's arm to get her to follow her across the room to the stairs that descended into the rest of the TARDIS.

"When we get back from Fiji I will show you around properly because there are so many amazing rooms in here, and I am fairly certain that I haven't even discovered them all yet. I mean, there's the library, which is probably my favourite, but then there's also the swimming pool and the garden –"

Sally looked incredulously over to the Doctor at this point as Bella continued to talk excitedly at a hundred miles an hour as she continued to walk down the stairs. The Doctor grinned ant shrugged, leaning against the centre console casually.

"I think she is a little bit excited to have you here," he said with a smile.

"You think?" she laughed before quickly making her way down the stairs after Bella. She emerged in a hexagonal-shaped corridor that was of similar design to that of the control room. Bella was halfway down the corridor, still talking as though Sally was right beside her. She quickened her pace to catch up with Bella.

"Bella, are we really going to Fiji?" Sally asked in a very unsure tone over the top of Bella.

Bella fell silent and looked to her best friend. "Of course we are – why wouldn't we be?" she asked, looking genuinely puzzled.

"I don't know, it's just –" Sally said, hesitating, feeling as though all of this were a practical joke that her brother, Dylan, had come up with. "Well, this isn't some kind of trick, is it?"

Bella's face broke into a warm smile. "You still think that none of this is actually real don't you?"

"No, no it's not that," Sally said quickly. "I mean, look at what just happened; there was a tall green, baby-like man living inside a human being who was working for a creepy faceless guy and now I am in a spaceship that is bigger on the inside and an alien is driving it!"

"I'm so sorry Sally," Bella said as she came to a sudden stop, her expression quite serious now. "Are we taking all of this too quickly for you?"

Sally shook her head adamantly, hearing the concern in her best friend's voice. "I'll deal with it eventually, I guess. But can we stay away from the really scary aliens for a bit?"

"I can't promise you anything," Bella laughed as she started to walk again.

"Why doesn't that surprise me," Sally smiled as she started walking again too. "So, you and the Doctor…"

"Let's not go there, Sally." Bella said, her cheeks flushing. "You are as bad as Jack!"

"Why not?" asked Sally, eager to find out as much as possible.

"Because it's all slightly complicated –"

"So start talking," Sally instructed firmly as they turned a corner and Bella stoped beside one of the doors.

"You're asking the wrong questions," Bella stated.

"Oh really?" said Sally sceptically.

"Mmm," Bella murmured.

"What questions _should_ I be asking then?"

"How exactly do you ride a giant sea turtle?" Bella said with a crooked smile before opening her bedroom door and walking into the room.

Sally seemed to think about this for a few moments before gasping "Wait – WHAT?" and following her into her room, Bella laughing loudly at her best friend's surprise.

The two girls emerged in the console room twenty minutes later in high-waisted short-shorts and their swimming costumes; Bella's being much more modest and old-fashioned than Sally's was.

"About time," the Doctor complained, but Sally could detect a distinct warmness in his voice.

"Aren't you getting changed?" Bella asked him as she went to stand beside him, taking off her big sunglasses.

"I'll change when we get there," he said dismissively. "Besides, someone has to drive." He added, winking at Bella.

"Drive?" repeated Sally. "Doesn't this ship have auto-pilot or something?" she added, flicking one of the closest switches.

The TARDIS gave a great lurch like they were falling downwards at alarming speeds. The Doctor cried for them to grab hold of something as they were thrown around with such force they all nearly were knocked of their feet. The Doctor quickly pulled levers, hit parts of the console with a mallet and pressed multiple buttons and eventually the TARDIS became still again.

"Sorry," Sally whispered, looking guiltily to the Doctor.

"I forgot to mention," the Doctor said quietly, panting ever-so-slightly and looking across to Sally with piercing eyes. "Don't touch the control panel."

Sally nodded, feeling sick;_ she could have gotten them all killed_, she thought, horrified with herself.

"Sorry," she said again and she received a reassuring look from Bella.

The Doctor gave her a small, forgiving nod and Sally looked down to her feet.

"Doctor, something has come up on the screen." Bella said suddenly, and Sally looked up in time to see the Doctor move to computer screen around so he could gaze intelligently at the strange circular writing.

"It's a distress signal," the Doctor told her. "We have materialised in a different solar system."

"Play it," Bella said instantly, motioning Sally to go and stand beside her.

"There is no visual link, it's just the audio," the Doctor said before pushing another button.

Static noise suddenly filled the TARDIS and a distraught male voice could only just be heard.

"_We are experiencing great difficulty_," they heard the man say. "_I have ordered for the passengers and most of the crew to –_"

The man's voice was drowned out by the overpowering static and the Doctor fiddled with more buttons.

"Come on!" he said.

"_- will be in charge of the ship, we need immediate assistance, I don't know how long the engines will last and I cannot guarantee the safety of the ship's passengers and crew, not while the monster is on the loose –_"

The man broke off again and the Doctor exchanged a quick, worried glance with Bella.

" _- I cannot stress enough – please, I am begging anyone who can hear this message, we need your help, please!_"

"Sorry Sally, but we are going to have to miss Fiji for now," the Doctor said quickly, pulling another lever and the TARDIS gave a shudder and the klaxon began to screech.


	13. Ep2 The Cannibal Machine CH2

_**Author's note: So I have taken a ridiculously long time to update this. Hopefully you'll forgive me, I have been writing for my Sherlock fanfic and I find it a bit difficult to switch between the Doctor and Sherlock without losing some of the character detail. Hopefully they haven't blended. Please enjoy!**_

* * *

><p>The TARDIS gave another violent sway, nearly knocking both Bella and Sally over and the Doctor gave a roar of frustration.<p>

"What's wrong?" Bella yelled over the noise that the TARDSI was making.

"I can't land," he shouted back. "Hang on!"

They watched him pull two separate levers before quickly pulling the computer screen towards him, and then pushed another button.

The TARDIS suddenly became still, yet the klaxon still wheezed like it normally did mid-flight and the time rotor rose and fell. Bella quickly followed the Doctor around the console towards the doors, feeling slightly confused.

"Doctor?" she asked him.

"Someone has left the landing inhibitors on, which means I can't land on deck and without the proper schematics of the vessel it's too risky for me to land inside, even if the ship would let me." He explained at one hundred miles an hour.

"Do you know what kind of ship it is?" Bella wondered.

"Not without taking a look at it," the Doctor said as he made to reach for the doors.

"Doctor!" gasped Bella, grabbing his arm to stop him. "We're mid-flight – if you open the doors we'll get sucked out!"

The Doctor gave her a warm smile.

"We won't, I promise." He said gently before pulling open the doors. "We have the airlock,"

Bella grinned in amazement as she looked out over the stars and galaxies that were just outside the TARDIS doors.

"Brilliant isn't it?" the Doctor grinned enthusiastically down to her,

Bella gave a laugh, thinking that it were an understatement as she edged forwards, gripping tightly onto the edge of the TARDIS doors, the Doctor telling Sally to come and have a look too., Her grin faded however when she looked down below them.

"Doctor," she whispered and the Doctor was instantly at her side, peering down to the black ship below them.

It looked similar in the exterior design to an aircraft carrier, having a large deck with short railings around the side. In the middle of the space ship was what looked like the helm; a multi-storied building that was almost as wide as the ship was.

"An aircraft carrier in space?" asked Sally, her eyes wide in disbelief.

"It isn't an aircraft carrier," the Doctor said quietly.

"What is it?" asked Bella.

"A refugee ship," the Doctor explained quietly. "And there is the landing inhibitor's switch." He added, pointing down to a small switch on the side of the helm's wall, right next to thick metal doors.

"How are we going to deactivate it?" Bella asked the Doctor as he began to pace back and forth.

"We can't," he told her. "The only way is for someone to manually reset it, which I could do, but there needs to be someone driving the TARDIS –"

"You _could_ still drive the TADIS, Doctor." Bella said with a slight smile. "I could put on one of those space suits and then you could get the TARDIS in as low as possible and I could jump out onto the deck and manually switch off the landing inhibitors."

"No," the Doctor said instantly, closing the doors. "It's too dangerous –"

"But we have to try and help them," Bella said calmly. "The captain said that they desperately need help, that there was some kind of monster –"

"Exactly, I'm not letting you go on board a ship that we know nothing about, you could get hurt." The Doctor said stubbornly, starting to walk back towards the console.

"Doctor, that's never stopped us before, and we do know something about the ship." Bella told the Doctor quickly, and Sally watched the pair of them as they looked at one another resolutely. "We know that the people on that ship need our help"

The Doctor looked unblinkingly at Bella for a long time, as if weighing up the pro's and con's in his head, before finally giving a small nod.

"Go and get one of the space suits." He said quietly and Bella nodded, instantly making for the stairs.

Sally watched open-mouthed as the Doctor moved back over to the TARDIS doors, opening them and peering down to the ship below him, squinting as though he was looking for something in particular. Sally couldn't believe that he was actually going to let Bella go on a spaceship that contained some kind of a monster.

"I've got it!" Bella called, running back up the stairs carrying a burnt orange space suit, a helmet and a pair of black boots.

"Good, come here," the Doctor said, waving at her to join him over by the doors. See the trap door over by the landing pad?"

Bella craned her neck, looking down to the ship below her.

"The one down on the bow?" she asked, the Doctor nodding in answer.

"You'll have to open it and drop down into it," the Doctor started to tell her quickly. "There will be another box somewhere there; it will be a secondary switch, maybe try that one after the one on deck."

Bella nodded resolutely before she placed her legs into her space suit and pulled it up onto put her arms in as well and zipped it all the way up. The Doctor held out his arms for her to lean on while she slipped her bare feet into the heavy black boots.

"I will get the TARDIS as close as possible can to the deck, but, if the distance is too far we'll have to think of another way to get on board." The Doctor said as Bella placed the helmet over her head. "You have direct contact with the TARDIS via the suit, but once you leave the TARDIS I can't bring you back until you switch off the landing inhibitors, do you understand.

"Yeah," Bella said, her voice sounding different through the helmet. "And what happens if there is no air lock in place?"

"There is one in place, I've already checked." The Doctor said as Bella gave him a slight smile. "But we'll know more once you've landed down there, the suit will give me the particulars."

"Good," Bella smiled. "Should be easy,"

The Doctor gave her a quick frown before reaching into his inside pocket.

"Take the sonic in case you need it," he said quietly, handing his beloved sonic screwdriver across to Bella who took it gently. "Be careful."

"Always," she said softly before the two of them exchanged a quick hug.

"Are you actually going to go down there?" Sally asked, feeling forgotten from where she was standing. They both looked over to her with slightly guilty expressions on their faces and she noticed Bella give the Doctor a small nod before he walked away up the ramp towards the centre console.

"I am really doing this," Bella said calmly.

"But why?" asked Sally, feeling confused and a little concerned for her best friend. "You don't even know these people, why should you risk your life for them, and what do you owe them?"

"They asked for help," Bella said, giving Sally's hand a quick squeeze before pulling a pair of thick gloves from one of the many pockets in the suit. "See you soon she smiled.

"Sally, I'll need your help to keep the TARDIS stabilized," the Doctor said, motioning her back up the ramp to the consol. He wore a serious expression on his face as he looked to her. "And I honestly can't do this without you."

He quickly gave sally her instructions, indicating which levers she needed to hold onto, then looked over to Bella.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Let's do it," she answered determinedly, taking hold of the railing beside the still open doors. The Doctor gave a reluctant nod and said "Hold on," before he pulled a lever and the klaxon began to rise and fall, screeching loudly.

"Sally, push the button NOW!" the doctor yelled over all of the noise and Sally did as she was told. Something sparked below their feet and the TARDIS lurched from side-to-side as she seemed to groan in protest. The Doctor pulled levers, pushed buttons and hit the console with the rubber mallet, all the while watching the screen with a look of utmost concentration upon his face.

"Just a bit more!" yelled Bella from the doorway.

"Come on!" the Doctor yelled in frustration, reaching over Sally to push yet another button. "Bella, this is it, I can't get her any closer; can you make it?"

"I – I think so," Bella answered uncertainly.

"You don't have to do this!" the Doctor shouted as the console showered him and sally in red hot sparks.

"No, I am going now –"

"BELLA!" the Doctor yelled as Bella jumped (or fell, Sally couldn't tell which) out of the open doors. The TARDIS lurched suddenly, knocking both her Doctor and Sally off their feet before becoming still again. The Doctor instantly got to his feet and ran towards the doors, Sally quickly following him, her heart racing.


End file.
